WHAT IS MOYSEION?
The MOYΣEION is a place where you can stay to relive in an immersive and multiensoryway, life experiences belonging to the world of Magna Graecia (from the 7th to the 4thcentury BC), and of those peoples who inhabited the territory of Matera before the GreekColonists (4th millennium - 7th century BC).
The structure occupies an area of about a thousand square meters inside the Sassi of Matera, where three Neolithic houses, five Enotrian houses and eight Magna Graecia houses have been reconstructed. Alongside areas designed for communal living, one finds the recreation of a Water Sanctuary devoted to the goddess Demeter. Furniture and artifacts, as far as possible, have all been reproduced philologically with techniques from experimental archaeology. The bathrooms, the water and air conditionings system, the mattresses and all the devices required by health and safety regulations are not part of the set-up.
The stay also includes, for those who want it, participation in a series of rituals that are accompanied by music and dance performances, including: the ritual of Xenia (welcoming the guest), the Water Sanctuary ritual, the ritual of the Symposium and the ritual of the Morning Meal. During the rituals guests are required to wear appropriate costumes.
Lights, sounds, dances, perfumes, fabrics, foods, jewels, cosmetics and body care products are all philological reproductions of products that existed in the Magna Graecia era.
But above all, the MOYΣEION is a place of the spirit, where you can try to rekindle those sparks of the past that have been transmitted to us, but which are now biologically dormant within us. A place where you can acquire cultural experiences handed down by other civilizations and other eras, whose original affective dimension can be partially recovered; where you can discover sublime monsters, whose depth makes our rational knowledge appear inadequate to the new perception of the human condition.
Live the MOYΣEION and maybe you will become a slightly different person; at worst, you will have decided to remain the same.