A Local’s Guide to Matera, Italy
Before we begin, I need your imagination.
Imagine a vast area made up of gentle hills covered in golden wheat. Picture the wind rustling through the soft grain and a bright blue sky overhead.
Now, look forward to where, all of a sudden, your gaze arrives at a point where the earth cracks, revealing a deep rocky gorge. At its bottom, a small river slowly snakes through, surrounded by high rock walls dotted with small natural caves.
Right here, on the edge of a canyon, almost 10,000 years ago, a group of neolithic people decided to settle. They used the natural caves, expanded them, and painstakingly carved new ones in a process that, over thousands of years, created the incredible stone city of Matera.
Benvenuti! Welcome!
Table of Contents
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Matera planning cheatsheet
Plan your itinerary with expert advice
- Book a Puglia travel consultation with a local expert
My favorite hotels in Lecce
- Sextantio Le Grotte - luxurious cave-style hotel in a great location. $200-400/night
- Palazzo Viceconte - gorgeous restored palazzo in the Sassi area. $150-300/night
- Hotel Belvedere - modern guesthouse with views over the old town. $150/night
- Livingstone B&B - Good value bed & breakfast in the new town. $120/night
Guided tours and activities
How to get around
- Car rentals with DiscoverCars
- Train tickets from Trenitalia
- Bus routes and schedules at Moovit and BusBud
Let’s plan your itinerary!
If you could use some help coming up with a great plan for your visit to Matera (and Basilicata/Puglia more broadly), schedule a Puglia travel consultation with me!
These are one-hour Zoom calls where we can chat about the trip you’re planning and I’ll share my tips and advice, answer your travel questions, and help you perfect your itinerary.
Where is Matera
Matera is the 2nd largest, but most famous city in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. Although many visitors think that it’s in Puglia, it is not. Basilicata is a different region, and a little visited one. It is surrounded by the larger and more known regions of Puglia, Calabria, and Campania.
The city of Matera lies about 65 km west of Bari (under an hour by car) and 250 km southeast of Naples. It’s small, landlocked, and located in a rocky region of rolling hills and wheat fields.
How to get there
Let’s be honest, getting to Matera is a bit of a pain!
There is no airport here, train service is extremely limited (and the trains that do come are slow), and even bus connections, while ok, are long. Matera is just not really near anywhere else. That’s part of the magic of the place!
If you’re coming from elsewhere in Italy, the easiest way to get to Matera is to fly to Bari’s airport in neighboring Puglia and then take a car or bus to Matera. Bari also has good train connections with Rome and other parts of Italy.
Matera is about 65 kms (about 40 miles) from Bari, and you can can get there in a little under an hour by car. Direct shuttle buses leave from Bari airport for Matera every day, so if you don’t want to rent a car, you’ll still have no problem getting to town.
If you take the train to Bari and then want to take a bus to Matera, that’s easy too. Buses from Bari train station to Matera take about 1 hour and 20 minutes, and they depart frequently throughout the day.
Most departures are in the afternoon or evening though, with only a few leaving in the morning. Most buses depart from Bari Centrale train station, but some leave from the port. Tickets cost from 5 to 15 euros. You can book with Flixbus, busmiccolis, and itabus.
Still, I’d recommend renting a car for two reasons:
The drive to Matera is quite nice and stopping in the town of Altamura is always very pleasant
The countryside outside of Matera is beautiful and having a car will let you explore a bit more of the Basilicata region, where you’ll barely encounter another tourist.
You can also take a private transfer from pretty much anywhere in Puglia to Matera. Most people arrive from Bari (the nearest airport) or somewhere in Puglia’s Valle d’Itria area. To have a rough idea, expect to pay around $120 USD for Bari to Matera
Why visit
In 2019, Matera was named the European Capital of Culture, something the city is very proud of. But that doesn’t really have any bearing on why you should visit!
Consider that Matera has no truly "must see” sights; instead, the entire place is a must see! It is the wonderful and totally distinct atmosphere that makes Matera so worth visiting.
All made of stone, and with buildings and dwellings literally carved out of solid rock, the city is simply beautiful and entirely unique in Italy. Once a place so poor that it was a topic of national shame, it’s now exceedingly elegant. Its location is also stunning; a rocky outcrop on the edge of a deep ravine.
The historic center is a jumble of steep stone staircases, weaving alleys, elegant promenades, and homes, restaurants, and churches all hewn out of cliffs. At night, wrought iron lamp posts emit an orange glow that makes the place feel like something out of a fairy tale. At sunrise, golden light bathes the city in a totally different, but no less beautiful glow.
For those who want to be active, the canyon beneath town has good hiking trails, rupestrian cave churches to explore, and incredibly rudimentary cave dwellings to step inside, offering insight into how the people here lived not not even 80 years ago. There’s also good cycling in the quiet roads beyond the city and Basilicata’s short coastline is just a short drive away. For day trips, there are a handful of lovely, but almost entirely unexplored towns within a 1-hour drive.
Introduction to the city
The origins
Matera is a city of about 60,000 people in the Basilicata region of Italy. Although often included in itineraries for Puglia, Basilicata is a different region and Matera is not in Puglia. Nonetheless, it’s only an hour from places like Bari and Alberobello, so it makes sense to include it in a trip to Puglia.
There are nearly 5,000 caves that were turned into permanent dwellings in which local people lived continuously for 9,000+ years up until the 1950s.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Italian government decided to relocate almost 15,000 residents due to unsanitary conditions where people even still lived with their animals. For many decades, the poverty and absurd condition of life in Matera were a matter of national shame and embarrassment. Today’s stunning, elegant Matera was a very different place for residents until fairly recently.
When you first look at Matera, you might find yourself thinking that you don’t see any caves, but only beautiful little stone houses all built one on top of another. Give yourself some time to explore and enter a house - then the city's true character will reveal itself to you.
Once inside some of these buildings, you’ll realize that almost every structure in town masks the entrance to a cave. These newer dwellings have pushed out from the caves, renovated them, and made them very beautiful in some cases, but they all still are comprised in part by a cave.
Once carving deeper into the rock became too challenging, and after civilization brought the art of carving stone blocks for building, the locals managed to start closing off their caves to the outside - first with just a wall and entrance door. Later, the walls were expanded, allowing for the creation of rooms and living areas that pushed out beyond the caves.
The historic part of Matera was completely emptied by the Italian government in the 1950’s and 60’s and it was left for decades in complete abandon, becoming practically an open garbage dump. Even today, residents do not live in the historic sassi area of town.
Today's Matera
Today's Matera is almost unbelievably different from even just 30 years. Over the past two decades tens of millions of dollars have been invested in cleaning up and revitalizing the historic center and what was once an abandoned part of town left to decay is now the city's most beautiful area.
The renovation and restoration of the gorgeous city that you’ll see today only began in the 1990s when Matera was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Even then, change was slow and it was not truly until its appointment as a “European Capital of Culture” in 2019 that big investment began to flow in, turning Matera into an outright tourist attraction.
Matera is now divided clearly into two halves, the “new town” and the “old town". The two areas are separated from each other by the street "Via Lucana”, but it's also pretty easy to tell the difference regardless - one area is thousands of years old while the other was built in the 1900s! In the map above, I've highlighted the old town in yellow so that you can understand better.
Locals further divide the old town into two halves: Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, with the our cathedral serving as the point where both sides meet. You'll hear "Caveoso” and "Barisano” while you're here, so it's helpful to know this distinction, but it doesn't really make any difference. The old town is small and the two sides look very similar.
The old town is where you'll find all the main sights, the city's best restaurants, the prettiest architecture, the best viewpoints, and most hotels. It's also where you'll find all the tourists!
Walking in the Sassi area now, especially at dusk, is like walking in a fairy tale ghost town where the empty houses have been filled with shops, restaurants, hotels, and little museums. It is impossibly charming.
The closer you get to Via Lucana (meaning the higher up you go in the direction of the new town), the less historic the architecture becomes. This area is still pretty, but a bit less fairytale-esque. It's more lively though, as locals come here to hang out, go for a walk, and grab a drink. The Sassi area had been abandoned for so long that locals still don't really go there (unless they have a business there or are tour guides like me!), meaning that it can feel rather touristy by day and a bit sleepy at night.
The new part of the city has little of interest for travelers, but it's pleasant, flat, and where almost all the locals live. If you need something like a grocery store, a pharmacy, or any of the other "conveniences” of modern life, this is where you'll have to head!
How long to spend
While Matera's historic center can be easily visited over the course of a day, you'd be wise to spend 2 days here. This will give you enough time to explore the center, see some of the new town, go for a hike, and maybe even make a trip out to some pretty nearby villages.
Also, keep in mind that Matera is most beautiful in the evenings and early mornings, so you need to sleep here at least one night to experience that.
You should also consider that the city has no airport, basically no real train service, and is not particularly close to anywhere else in Basilicata or Puglia. That means that most visitors don’t arrive here on their first day until mid-morning or early afternoon.
So, assuming you arrive in the late morning or early afternoon, you’ll be able to see most of the historic center on your first day. You can then enjoy a wonderful sunset over the town and explore more when it becomes illuminated by the golden lampposts that line the streets. Wandering the sassi area for the first time at dusk and by night is a rather magical experience.
The following morning, head out for a hike in the Murgia Materana canyon where you can cross a hanging bridge, see original cave dwellings, and enter rustic "rupestrian churches” adorned with ancient frescos. In the afternoon, you can either explore more of the city or grab your car and head to somewhere like the "Cripta del Peccato Originale” or the beautiful nearby towns of Pisticci and/or Craco.
There's plenty to keep you occupied for a couple days.
When to visit
A town made by caves carved down into a canyon… Unless you’re a rafting fanatic, you probably don’t want to be here with torrential rains! In other words, don’t come in the heart of winter when it can be cold, rainy, and rather grey.
The best time of year to visit Matera is spring (March to June) or fall (mid-September to December). In both periods you might get a rainy day or two and occasional overcast weather, but in general both the temperature and the weather are good and you avoid the insufferable July and August heat.
Summer (July to early September) is the busiest time of year for Matera and the least pleasant time to be here. Aside from being roasting hot, it is also when hordes of stressed-out Italians are traveling the peninsula, mostly with their brains switched off, and with their very non-German attitudes towards things like lines and organization, and their adorable, “lively”, screaming children in tow.
While Matera did not used to get many international visitors, that is very quickly starting to change and summer is getting much busier. The crowds are still nothing close to what you’ll see in places like Florence, Siena, Venice, Rome, etc., but it does get crowded.
If coming in summer, but don't be scared - you can still have a nice visit, but you have to plan better and you need to accept that it will be busy.
Where to stay
Matera is a very small city, so as long as you stay fairly central you’re never going to be far away from anywhere else in town. But it is extremely hilly, so short distances can be more work than they seem. Your main choice is whether you want to stay in the historic sassi area on the low side of town or in the more modern area higher up.
When planning where to stay in Matera, an important thing to take in consideration is what means of transportation you will be using to get here. If you arrive by train, bus, or private transfer, you don’t need to think anymore and you can certainly choose a hotel in the historic center, perhaps even a cave hotel!
However, if you’ll be driving and coming with a car rental, know that the historic center is a ZTL zone - essentially a no traffic zone. So, you’ll need to stay at a hotel in the new town or park your car at a paid lot there and then walk down into the historic center with your bags. A few hotels in the historic center can actually get a permission for you to drive in with your bags (though the narrow roads will probably leave you a bit nervous), but many more will offer to have a tuk-tuk or some sort of a vehicle meet you wherever you park and then transport you to the hotel.
Another consideration is related to the hotel itself; sleeping in a cave is definitely a unique experience, but there are downsides that you have to consider such as the lack of natural light, poor ventilation, and high humidity in the air. In small hotels and holiday houses that don’t have their rooms constantly occupied, you might smell moldy air and it may feel quite damp inside.
If you are staying only one night, the fun of staying in a cave hotel almost certainly outweighs these considerations. But if you’re staying for two nights or more, consider whether these things might start to bother you.
Also be aware that the old town of Matera has been abandoned for such a long time that it is still unusual to see locals enjoying a walk in the “Sassi” area. Locals tend to stick to the upper part of the historic center or the new town. As a result, the sassi area tends to be busy in the day with tourists, but sleepy at night. So, if you want to be close to the sassi, but with a more lively atmosphere, choose the upper part of the historic center (or the new town).
Hotels:
Sant’Angelo Resort is one of the nicest hotels in Matera. It’s a 5-star property with luxurious sassi/cave-style rooms, one of the best locations in town, and definitely also one of the highest prices. ($500+ USD per night).
Palazzo Gattini is another luxury hotel right in the Sassi area of Matera. Rooms are elegant and spacious, and they have a spa and rooftop bar. Keep in mind that it is not a cave hotel. $350-800 USD per night.
Sextantio Le Grotte is a cave-style hotel with beautiful touches and a fabulous location. $200-400 USD per night..
Palazzo Viceconte is a delightfully restored palazzo with exceedingly chic style in the old town. $300 USD per night.
Residence Comera is a nice semi-cave hotel right on the edge of the old town. $150 USD per night.
Hotel Belvedere is on the very edge of the Sassi area, but with a location that overlooks the entire city and canyon below. It’s simple, but nice and has a mix of regular and cave rooms. $100-150 USD per night,
Livingstone B&B is a cute little bed and breakfast with comfortable rooms in the new town. Parking on street is easy, you’ll have fewer stairs to walk, and you’re just a stone’s throw from the old town. $120 USD per night.
What to see & do
Matera has a few sights that I think everyone should visit, but for the most part the pleasure of coming here is really just in walking around and soaking up the atmosphere. Yes, you should visit a rupestrian church, yes you should go inside a cave house, and yes you should also visit one of our cisterns/palombari. Oh, go on - you could even visit a museum or two!
But once you've seen the highlights, throw your checklist in the nearest trash can, and just enjoy being here. You don't need to visit every church, every cave house, and every museum. Go to a couple and you'll get the idea. This will also save you some money as everywhere in Matera charges an entrance fee.
1. Wander around the sassi area
As I described before, Matera is split into the old town and the new town. But the old town can be even further divided. The Sassi area refers to the lowest part of town directly in front of the ravine. This is where you'll find the densest concentration of original architecture and cave dwellings. It's the busiest area for tourists, but you don't typically find a lot of locals there.
As I just said, the best of visiting Matera's historic center is walking around aimlessly and stumbling across all the treasures, architecture, and amazing views. But, if you want some reference points, here are a few places you should keep in mind:
Chiesa di Santa Maria de Idris - There are more than half a dozen churches in Matera's old town, but Santa Maria de Idris is a standout. A towering monument literally carved into an enormous boulder, it is unlike any other church in Italy.
Chiesa di San Pietro Barisano - Another rock church, it's outwardly a bit less impressive than Maria de Idris, but the inside is lovely with some frescoes and a network of catacombs.
Convento di Sant’Agostino - This convent is fairly plain, so I'll forgive you if you don't go inside. But I won't forgive you if you don't at least walk over to enjoy some fabulous views of the city and the canyon from in front of it! If you do go inside, be sure to ask to see the frescoes that are below ground.
Belvedere di Piazza Giovanni Pascoli - A little square offering a great viewpoint (from the opposite side of town from that of the convent) over the city.
Belvedere Luigi Guerricchio - Another great viewpoint near to the Palombaro Lungo cistern.
Piazza San Pietro Caveoso - Aside from being next to two or three wonderful rupestrian churches (one of which has the same name as the square), this is also just a really beautiful square. You take one look around you and know that there's nowhere else like Matera.
Via Madonna delle Virtu - This is a street, not a place, but it's the elegant curving road that hugs the cliffs where the old town meets the ravine atop which the whole city sits. No visit to Matera is complete without walking it from start to finish.
2. Enter a cave-house museum
The interior of Vico Solitario cave house. Photo: Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
There are several caves houses that have been converted into museums, the most popular of which is in Vico Solitario (which can get very crowded).
A few other cave houses you can visit are: Casalnuovo, Casa Grotta Senza Nidd, and C’era una volta. These are good options if you're here on a busy day and don't want to deal with the crowds at Vico Solitario.
Which museum you should choose doesn’t matter terribly as they are all built with the same concept of refurbishing a cave with original tools and period decorations/furniture to give visitors a realistic look at what every day life was like for people in these extreme living conditions.
3. Learn about rainwater collection and visit a cistern or “palombaro”
Deep underground at Palombaro Lungo. Photo: Holger Uwe Schmitt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matera is unique for the stunning and clever system that the locals developed to collect, filter, and store rainwater by using their rooftops and gutters to channel water down to cisterns where it was purified and then passed on to other houses and buildings.
There are several places where you can admire all these engineering skills… perhaps also in your hotel.
There are also huge water reservoirs created in more recent times where rainwater was stored for public use; some of them are open to visit and they are called “palombari”.
One place where you can see this in detail is La raccolta delle acque, a very small "museum” that is rarely crowded. For a grander experience (with a lot more people…) check out Palombaro Lungo, which will let you go deep under Matera in a very cool experience.
Ipogeo MateraSum is another nice little museum where you can see a bit of underground Matera and learn about the living conditions and history of the city. It's not really a cistern, but it's similar and much less visited than some of the more popular attractions.
4. Go hiking in the Murgia Materana canyon
By bike, car, taxi, or on your own blessed two feet, you can cross from Matera into the canyon that surrounds it. The canyon comprises the protected “Parco Regionale della Murgia Materana" park.
With the park/canyon you have a host of good hiking trails and some truly outstanding views.
There are a few different hikes, (most take 1.5 to 3 hours), but the most popular is the one that goes to the "Tibetan bridge”. The trail actually begins right on the edge of the sassi area, is moderate in difficulty, and perfectly easy to do on your own. You can find the route on Alltrails.
No matter which hike you do, you'll pass by rustic cave dwellings that are carved into the canyon's walls, rupestrian churches (these are cave churches, some of which have original frescoes), and lovely scenery. The views back towards Matera are spectacular.
If you're coming between spring and fall, hikes are best done in the morning when temperatures are more reasonable.
If you'd like to have a guide, I offer a combined Matera city tour and Murgia canyon hike.
5. Visit a Rupestrian cave church
Chiesa di San Giovanni in Monterrone. Photo: Diego Baglieri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
There are several churches around Matera that have been literally carved out of the rocks. They are open to the public and usually cost just a few euros. Inside, you can admire the artwork and marvel at the sheer effort to carve such things out of a rock wall. Many have beautiful frescoes left by the monks that lived in them.
A unique place among all the churches (my favorites are Santa Lucia Alle Malve, San Giovanni in Monterrone, and San Nicola dei Greci), is San Pietro Barisano which, aside from being large and very well done, also preserves houses a “putridarium”.
A putridarium was an underground crypt where bodies were prepared for burial and kept until decomposition was complete. The process for how they did this is rather "eyebrow-raising”, I’ll leave it to you to research further! Suffice to say it is creepy!
6. See sassi in their original states along Rione Casalnuovo
Un-renovated cave dwellings along Rione Casalnuovo. Photo: Mboesch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Because the sassi area has been so beautifully renovated and "prettied up", I think it's nice to also take a walk into a side of town where you can see what life here was really like.
Behind the church of Santa Lucia alla Malve is a winding road called "Rione Casalnuovo”. Along it are dozens of cave houses that were in use when residents were moved in the 1950's and 1960's and they have not been gentrified or renovated. The area is abandoned and there's nothing particular to note, but it's really interesting to get an authentic look at what the city looked like before money started flowing in.
To give you a reference point, I'm talking about this area.
7. Check out Cripta del Peccato Originale
Frescoes inside the church. Photo: Pietro & Silvia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Just a little ways out of town is the Cripta del Peccato Originale, a church which offers a truly special experience. Built in the 8th century and carved out of the side of a cliff overlooking a gulley, the location is reason enough to visit. But even better, it has ancient and stunning frescoes inside.
From the parking area it’s a lovely short hike in. It’s located on a private farm and you need to arrange to visit in advance as visitor numbers are tightly controlled.
8. Take a tour with me (Paolo)
Yours truly!
Matera is small and compact, and despite the winding alleys and stairs you can certainly explore it on your own with a little planning. However, part of what makes this such an interesting place to visit is the almost unbelievable history here and the stories of thousands of years of constant inhabitation.
If you want to really grasp the history, and see some spots you’d never find on your own, you should plan on hiring a guide. I generally think that around 2-3 hours is the right amount of time for a leisurely tour (and that's how long mine are).
Before or after any tour, go for a walk and get lost: literally! At the end of the day you won’t be really lost because every staircase eventually gets you to the bottom of the sassi (where there’s only one street) or to the top where all the locals and the baroque churches are.
If you're interested in a tour, I'd love to be your guide! You can find more details on my tour here - 2.5 hour private Matera walking tour.
9. Go to a bakery!
Pane di Matera bread. Photo: Kars Alfrink, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matera is well known in Italy for its durum-wheat bread (pane di Matera)! All visitors should head to a good local bakery and try some of the Materana specialties.
If you want to try your own hand at baking, tour agencies organize tours where you can see some of the oldest wood-fired ovens in the city and try to make the unique shape of Matera bread. I personally just prefer eating it…
10. Tour around with a tuk tuk
If all the steps in Matera sound like more work than you want, but you still want to see as much as possible, then a tour with a three wheeler is definitely something cool and fun to do.
If you want to book in advance, this tour on Viator provides a nice introduction, but you can also arrange a ride directly with a driver/guide once you're in town.
Restaurants & dining
Me and my partner out for lunch!
All the following places are in an order that goes from the simplest informal place to the higher end restaurant
1. Paoluccio
In Matera, bread is part of the culture and if you stick around for a couple of days you’re sure to notice in how many recipes bread is the key ingredient. Therefore, going to a bakery is a must-do!
My favorite places (at least the one closer to the city center) are two. Paoluccio is a trip back into the 50s. Even if it is in the main Via del Corso, it has refused to adapt to the times, and it makes no effort to look modern or fashionable. Instead, they continue to put all their focus on making very good local breads as well as a simple but just outrageously good focaccia.
When you go to try their focaccia, don’t get tempted by all the options, you must try the one with tomato sauce!
2. Caffè Tripoli
Caffè Tripoli is my other favorite spot for baked goods. It is one of the tiniest cafès I have ever been to (using the restrooms here is part of the experience), but the quality of everything they make is beyond your imagination.
Maurizio, the owner, inherited the place from his father and continues to run it with his mom, who bakes unbelievable delicacies. Maurizio is completely devoted to researching the best ingredients and products, and that is what you’ll find here.
Pastries, aperitivo, gelato, sandwiches… every moment of the day is a good time to stop by here and see what’s available.
It’s also really easy to find because it is right in the main square.
3. I Vizi Degli Angeli
The best gelato and “granita” in town is made in a small place in Piazza Pascoli called I Vizi Degli Angeli. Fresh ingredients and the old fashioned way of keeping it in a special freezer make this gelato a product of the highest quality!
4. La Latteria
La Latteria has another nice story to tell; Emanuele, the owner, inherited his father’s “salumeria” (let’s translate it like “grocery store”, but with a focus on cured meats and local cheeses) and slowly he has turned it into a little bistro where you can taste great local products and dishes. It also has a lot of light options great for a light lunch.
5. Abbondanza Lucana
If you are looking for a proper restaurant then I highly recommend a meal at Abbondanza Lucana where you can get a taste of local tradition. The name of the place means abundance… so please don’t go there to order a salad!
6. La Gatta Buia
For a dinner in a nice location, with a great wine list, and with an elegant atmosphere, I suggest you to go to La Gatta Buia where not only the food itself, but also the whole experience will leave you with nice memories of your time in Matera.
7. Dimora Ulmo
For gourmet food with an incredible view, I would choose a beautiful noble “Palazzo” called Dimora Ulmo. It is a very elegant location and it is a great way to celebrate a special occasion or simply to complete your experience of Matera in an outstanding way!
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