Italy · Basilicata · Cities of art
the town carved into the tufa, with the Sassi, the churches in the rock and the living nativity at Christmas
Matera is a town that for centuries lived inside the rock. On the side of the gravina, the canyon that separates it from the Murgia plateau, there are two great hollows of houses carved into the tufa and built one on top of the other, the Sassi: the Caveoso, shaped like a cavea, and the Barisano, on the side of the road to Bari. In between, on the spur of the Civita, stands the cathedral. In the Fifties the Sassi had become the symbol of the poverty of the South, and a law of 1952 moved fifteen thousand people out of them, half the town. They stayed empty for thirty years. Then the recovery, UNESCO in 1993, the films, and in 2019 the title of European Capital of Culture. Today you walk along stairways and alleys where people sleep in caves, and you step into frescoed churches carved into the stone.
Sleeping
The motorhome areas are outside the old town, a couple of kilometres from the Sassi: one to the north, with a shuttle to the centre, the other at an agriturismo to the south.
Contrada Pedale della Palomba, Strada Statale 7, 75100 Matera
it has a motorhome service point and a free shuttle to the centre, which is what you need to go down into the Sassi without moving the motorhome. Animals are welcome. Arrivals from 9:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 19:00
Contrada Chiancalata 27, 75100 Matera
an agriturismo south of the city, with a chemical waste point, water and electricity. You can turn up without booking while there is room. The website does not mention a shuttle: you reach the Sassi on foot or by city bus
Getting around
The town is divided in two: above is the Piano, with the squares and the palaces, below are the Sassi, where you go down on foot. The motorhome enters neither of them.
Seeing
A walk from the Piano to the Sassi: you start from piazza Vittorio Veneto, go down into the Barisano, climb to the Civita and finish in the Caveoso. The Murgia, on the other side of the gravina, is another half day. Tap a marker on the map to open its entry below.
Square · paid entry · 40.66694, 16.60648
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, 75100 Matera
the big square of the Piano, from which the Guerricchio viewpoint looks out over the Sasso Barisano. Under the square is the Palombaro Lungo, the cistern that collected water for the town: sixteen metres deep, fifty long, with walls of cocciopesto and room for five million litres. It was completed in 1882 by joining older caves, abandoned when the Apulian Aqueduct arrived and explored again only in 1991. You visit it on your own, with a sheet in seven languages, in a quarter of an hour; there is no booking, and if it is full you wait a few minutes.
Village · free entry · 40.66825, 16.61014
the larger of the two Sassi, the one facing north-west, towards the road to Bari. Here the caves have built façades, portals and courtyards in front of them, and today the Barisano is the part fullest of hotels, restaurants and shops carved into the rock. You go down into it from the viewpoint of piazza Vittorio Veneto, and you look at it from above at sunset, when the stone takes on colour.
Church · paid entry · 40.66874, 16.60925
the largest rock church in the town, carved between the twelfth and the thirteenth century, with the façade added in 1755. Under the floor are the rooms where the bodies of the dead were left to drain before burial. It is part of the rock church circuit of the Oltre l'Arte cooperative, with Santa Maria de Idris and Santa Lucia alle Malve: the ticket for three is the better deal.
Church · paid entry · 40.66681, 16.61133
Piazza Duomo, 75100 Matera
it stands at the top of the Civita, the spur between the two Sassi, and is the highest point of the old town. It is Apulian Romanesque, of the thirteenth century, with a bell tower of fifty two metres and the rose window on the façade. It is dedicated to the Madonna della Bruna, whose fresco of 1270 is inside, and to Sant'Eustachio. Inside there is also a stone nativity of the sixteenth century, carved by Altobello Persio and Sannazzaro di Alessano. It returned to worship in 2016, after ten years of restoration.
Museum · paid entry · 40.66612, 16.61225
Palazzo Pomarici, Via San Giacomo, 75100 Matera
the museum of contemporary sculpture, opened in 2006 inside a palace of the Sasso Caveoso and in the caves dug beneath it: seven caves and three courtyards, with about two hundred and seventy works by two hundred artists set among the tufa walls. In the rooms upstairs are the seventeenth century hunting paintings. Those travelling by motorhome who are members of the APC pay the reduced rate.
Village · free entry · 40.66461, 16.61199
Piazza San Pietro Caveoso, 75100 Matera
the Sasso facing south, laid out as an amphitheatre like the cavea of a theatre, which is where the name comes from. Here the caves have stayed barer, and many of the film scenes were shot here. At the end, on the edge of the gravina, is the square with the church of Santi Pietro e Paolo, known as San Pietro Caveoso, built in 1218 and remade in the seventeenth century with the façade and the bell tower. Opposite, beyond the canyon, you can see the caves of the Murgia.
Church · paid entry · 40.66408, 16.61209
the church carved at the top of the Monterrone, the spur of rock that stands in the middle of the Sasso Caveoso. The name comes from the Greek Odigitria, the Madonna who shows the way. From inside you pass into the church of San Giovanni in Monterrone, older, of the twelfth and thirteenth century, with frescoes ranging from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. The climb to get there is the finest viewpoint over the Caveoso.
Museum · paid entry · 40.66386, 16.61231
Vico Solitario 11, 75100 Matera
a house in the rock furnished as it was until the evacuation, with the high bed above the chest, the loom, the manger for the mule and the corner for the hens, all in the same room. It was the first cave house opened as a museum, in 1977, and it is the place where you understand what Carlo Levi and the law of 1952 were describing. The ticket includes the audio guide, also in Matera dialect.
Museum · paid entry · 40.66292, 16.61046
Via Domenico Ridola 24, 75100 Matera
the museum of medieval and modern art of Basilicata, in a seventeenth century palace above the Caveoso, looking out over the viewpoint of piazzetta Pascoli. The room that is worth the ticket is the one of Lucania '61, the canvas by Carlo Levi eighteen and a half metres long, painted for the hundred years of the unity of Italy and dedicated to the poet Rocco Scotellaro. Levi knew Basilicata from his internal exile, in 1935, the one of Christ Stopped at Eboli.
Viewpoint · paid entry · 40.66403, 16.61779
on the other side of the gravina, on the plateau of the Parco della Murgia Materana, is the spot from which you see all of Matera, straight ahead: it is the cover photograph of half the world. Around it are the rock churches of the park, such as the Madonna delle Tre Porte and San Falcione, and the caves you see from the Sassi. You can drive up to the car park, or walk from the town on trail 406, which starts from Porta Pistola, goes down into the gravina, crosses the stream on a seventy metre suspension bridge and climbs back up: six kilometres, two hours, two hundred metres of ascent, and hiking boots are compulsory. The park ticket includes the trails and the shuttle to the viewpoint.
When
Two events people come to Matera for on purpose, one in winter and one in summer, and for both the town fills up: book ahead.
Next: Living nativity in the Sassi · 5-6 Dec
a route of a kilometre and a half from the old town into the Sasso Caveoso, with more than two hundred extras in the caves and the alleys. The 2026 edition is the sixteenth, it is called Vera fratellanza and is dedicated to Saint Francis: it takes place on 5 and 6, 12 and 13, 19 and 20, 26 and 27 December and on 2 and 3 January, with entry in time slots from 16:15 to 19:25. The ticket costs 12 euros, 7 between 5 and 10 years, free under 5, and booking is compulsory; in bad weather the evening may be moved
the feast of the patron saint, on the day fixed in 1389 by Pope Urban VI, who had been archbishop of Matera. It begins at 4:30 in the morning with the shepherds' procession by candlelight; in the evening the triumphal papier-mâché float, built new every year, makes three rounds of the cathedral square and is then stormed and torn to pieces by the crowd, the strazzo, and the day closes with fireworks over the Murgia. On that day the rock churches, the cathedral and the Oltre l'Arte sites are closed
Remember
Matera · part two
and then?
What to taste, and where to go tomorrow.
Matera is a town of bread. Pane di Matera has been PGI since 2008: durum wheat semolina, sourdough starter, wood oven, the horn shape, and it keeps for a week. Until the Fifties every family marked it with its own wooden stamp before taking it to the communal oven. With the stale bread you make cialledda.
Looking
17 shots from our visit. Tap one to see it large.