Matera Discovery Guide
Getting around Matera the Smart Way
Matera is a town cut into a limestone ravine, where for most of its history people lived in caves quarried out of the rock rather than in buildings stacked on it. Nowhere else in Italy, and nothing else in Basilicata, looks remotely like it, and almost nowhere else in the world has been lived in continuously for as long.
The friction is that it is now very popular indeed. Since the 2019 Capital of Culture year the Sassi have filled with hotels and restaurants, and the central lanes in August are shoulder to shoulder.
Two things fix that. Stay overnight, because the Sassi at dusk with the lights coming on is the thing people remember. And cross the ravine into the Murgia park opposite, where the rock churches are, almost nobody goes, and you get the view the town is famous for. Bari is an hour away and is how most people arrive.
How to Experience Matera
Cross the ravine
Walk or drive into the Murgia park opposite and look back. This is the view of Matera, and hardly anyone bothers. Take water; there is no shade.
The Sassi at dusk
Stay to see the lights come on across the slope. It is the single best hour here.
A casa grotta
Ten minutes and a couple of euros, and everything else you see makes sense afterwards: one room, the bed, the loom, the mule's stall, the children.
The Palombaro Lungo
The cistern under the main square, which almost nobody expects.
One rock church properly
Rather than five quickly. Santa Maria de Idris in town, or book the Cripta del Peccato Originale outside it.
Get lost
The Sassi are a maze on several levels where lanes turn into stairs and roofs. Wandering without a plan is the correct way to use them.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Matera is a town that was publicly humiliated within living memory and is now admired for exactly the thing it was humiliated for, and that reversal colours everything.
People here are not sentimental about the caves. Plenty of residents were born in them or had parents moved out of them in the 1950s, and the poverty was real. The pride is genuine but it is pride in survival and in recovery, not nostalgia for a picturesque past.
The 2019 Capital of Culture year changed the town quickly. The Sassi now hold hotels, bars and short lets rather than residents, and the debate about whether the districts have been saved or merely re-emptied — this time by money rather than by decree — is live and openly had.
The Piano above is where ordinary Matera is: shops, schools, the passeggiata, and a working provincial town that most visitors walk straight past.
Basilicata generally is one of Italy's emptiest and poorest regions, and Materans are conscious of being its one famous place.
Travel Profile
- Best Known For The Sassi, a town cut into a limestone gorge • Continuously inhabited since the Palaeolithic • Over a hundred frescoed rock churches • Cleared by law in 1952, UNESCO-listed in 1993
- Travel Styles Cultural tourism • History • Architecture • Archaeology • Photography • Slow travel
- Travel Environments Historic cities • Countryside
- Getting Around No national railway station: the private Ferrovie Appulo Lucane run from Bari in about ninety minutes with reduced weekend service, and coaches are the practical option, frequent to Bari and direct to Naples and Rome; nearest airport Bari, about an hour; the Sassi are a network of stairs and lanes closed to cars, and the upper town holds the parking
Responsible Travel Tips
Matera is a small town under fast-growing pressure, and its particular problem is that the thing being loved is also somebody's home.
Short-letting has moved a large part of the Sassi's population out again. Staying in the Piano, or choosing a Sassi place run by people who live here, keeps more of the money and fewer of the effects local.
Water is the oldest constraint in Matera and has not gone away: the plateau has no surface water at all.
In the rock churches, do not touch the frescoes and do not use flash. These are painted plaster in unsealed caves, and humidity from visitors is a measurable problem.
In the Murgia park, keep to the paths, take everything out with you, and do not light anything — the scrub burns readily.
Buy the bread, the peppers and the cheese from producers rather than from souvenir shops. Basilicata is among the poorest regions in Italy and the difference in where that money lands is real.
When to Visit Matera
April to early June is the best window: warm days, cool evenings, the Murgia green and the town not yet full.
2 July is the Festa della Bruna, the most important day of the Matera year and unlike anything else in Italy.
July and August are hot and crowded, and the Sassi are hard work in the middle of the day. Evenings are excellent.
Mid-September to October is the other good window — warm, clear and much quieter, with the Murgia at its best for walking.
December brings a living nativity staged in the Sassi, which is the one thing the setting was made for.
January and February are cold and quiet, with a real chance of snow on the caves and the lowest prices of the year.
Travel Cost Levels in Matera
What a visitor actually pays in Matera
Sleeping in a cave is what people come for and it is priced accordingly, especially in summer. The Piano, five minutes' walk above the Sassi, costs a great deal less. Eating is cheap, and Basilicata's Aglianico del Vulture is among the best-value serious red wine in Italy.