Woebegone part of Italy sees payoff in 'Passion'

By Victor L. Simpson
Associated Press

MATERA, Italy — There's the hotel where Mel Gibson slept, the restaurant that dished up his favorite fettuccine, the cafe where he stopped for his morning cappuccino.

As the director's film "The Passion of the Christ" opened across Italy this week, no place had as much of a stake in the movie's success as this corner of Italy's poor Basilicata region.

For two months last year, Gibson and company set up shop in Matera, filming the graphic sequences of Christ's last hours, the bloody scenes of his torture and crucifixion.

Now, they hope to turn it into a tourist bonanza.

Along with its famous sassi — the caves dug into the rock that gives Matera the look of ancient Jerusalem — the town now has the film's backdrop to offer tourists on package tours — along with the scores of locals who worked as extras.

"We are off the beaten path; I don't have too many illusions," said Rosalia Giura Longo, who runs the Italia hotel and whose photo with Gibson hangs in the lobby alongside a thank-you note he wrote her. "But this year it looks like things are moving."

"Passion" tour packages by travel agencies reportedly have sparked interest among visitors from the United States, while Easter Week tourists from Europe — Germans, French, Norwegians and Italians — are already strolling Matera's narrow streets and up the hill where Jim Caviezel, the American actor who played Jesus, struggled under the cross.

"It's not yet a boom, but business is picking up," Maria Laura Isola said as she stood in front of her tiny Sassi Tourism office.

Matera isn't new to the "Passion" business. Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini shot his "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" in Matera in 1964, clearly struck by the same scenery that led Gibson to the site.

The cave houses dug out of volcanic rock have been on the U.N. World Heritage List for a decade, but the town suffers from isolation.

It's some 150 miles east of Naples, far from the sea, an airport or superhighway and served only by a one-track rail line to Bari on the Adriatic coast.

Not to miss this occasion, the town is unabashedly plugging its link to the Gibson film.