Matera
A city where people were still living in caves in the 1950s
- When to go
- October 17° · 5 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 54 km Bari
- Right now
Matera is done on foot, in a day or two if you sleep in a cave hotel. This isn't a reconstruction or an open-air museum — the city is carved into soft limestone and was lived in continuously for thousands of years, right up to 1952, when sixteen thousand people were still living in those caves, in conditions the Italian government called a national disgrace before evacuating the whole quarter. Today those same caves are hotels and restaurants.
The Sassi — literally 'the stones' — are two quarters on the side of a ravine, and walking through them is free: no gate, no ticket, the streets are public. You only pay to go inside: a restored cave dwelling like Casa Grotta, and the rock-cut churches, each separately.
What photos don't show is how steep it is. The Sassi are one staircase after another with no flat stretch anywhere, and the stone is polished smooth from use. And don't drive in — the entire old town is a ZTL zone, the cameras work and the fine follows you home; park around Via Lucana, outside the camera zone.
Guides for Matera
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Matera in 1 day
→Both Sassi on foot in one full day, with a climb to the far side of the ravine at the end — when the stone turns the…
Where to stay in Matera
→In Matera you are not choosing a district but a type of room — ordinary, or carved into the rock — and the second kind…
What to eat in Matera
→Basilicata's peasant cooking: nothing goes to waste, the pasta is durum-wheat semolina, and the bread carries its own…
The best time to visit Matera
→Bare stone with no trees holds and throws back the heat, so the season here changes not just the temperature but how…
What to see in Matera
The Sassi di Matera
Two cave quarters on the side of a ravine, UNESCO-listed since 1993. Free to walk, at any hour — best just before sunset, when the stone turns the colour of honey.
free
Casa Grotta
A restored cave dwelling furnished as it was until the 1952 evacuation — one room for the family, the donkey and the chickens. €8 and 15 min, and it changes how you read the rest of the city.
€8 · 15 min
The rock churches
Over a hundred and fifty Byzantine churches cut into the rock, many still frescoed. Most charge separately, €3–5 per church; the Crypt of Original Sin is outside town and needs booking.
€3–5 per church · closed depends on the church (e.g. San Giuliano on Sundays) · booking: no (except the Crypt of Original Sin — mandatory)
Belvedere Murgia Timone
The viewpoint on the far side of the ravine, where the whole Sassi lines up at once. Entry has been charged since 2026, €10 (Apr–Oct), €7 (Nov–Mar), and booking is recommended. Twenty minutes by car, or an hour on foot across the gorge.
€10 (Apr–Oct), €7 (Nov–Mar) · booking: recommended
Palombaro Lungo
An enormous water cistern dug beneath the main square, some fifteen metres deep. Visited in small groups — short, and unexpectedly impressive.
€3 · 15 min
MUSMA
The Museum of Contemporary Sculpture inside Palazzo Pomarici, spread across seven cave ipogei and ten rooms — the only place in the Sassi where the exhibits are part of the interior itself. €10 (€5 reduced), open daily except 25 December, 1 January and 2 July.
€10 (€5 reduced) · closed 25 Dec, 1 Jan, 2 Jul
Stories from Matera
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Matera: the city in the rock, from national disgrace to UNESCO
→A city carved from pale, porous stone, which the state emptied of more than fifteen thousand people in 1952 and which the world now walks through.
Two things you probably did not know
In 1952 Matera was emptied by law: the cave dwellings were declared a national disgrace and seventeen thousand people were moved to new estates. Those same houses are now UNESCO heritage and hotels.
Its stone and caves have made Matera stand in for Jerusalem for half a century. Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew and Gibson's Passion of the Christ were shot here, and in 2019 so was the opening of the last James Bond film.
Ready for Matera?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Matera — day trips or weekends.
Italy
→The cities on the high-speed line are an hour or two apart; the coast, Matera and the Tuscan hills lie off it
France
→From Paris the TGV reaches Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in about two hours — France is chosen by direction, not by city
Spain
→A country where dinner is at ten and the city wakes up as everywhere else turns the lights off
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
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