Matera

Matera’s Sassi are among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world: cave dwellings, rock churches and stone houses carved into a ravine in Basilicata. Once abandoned, now restored as cave hotels and cultural spaces, Matera has become one of Italy’s most extraordinary places to stay.

Matera stands above the Gravina, a deep limestone gorge in Basilicata near the border with Apulia. Its two Sassi districts, Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso, descend the slope in terraces of houses built over and into caves, linked by stairways and lanes; between them rises the Civita, the hill of the Romanesque cathedral. Across the ravine, the Murgia plateau is pitted with caves and rock churches, many decorated with medieval frescoes.

By the mid-twentieth century the Sassi had become a national symbol of rural poverty, and their inhabitants were moved to new districts in the 1950s. Restoration began in the 1980s; UNESCO listed the Sassi and the park of the rock churches in 1993, and Matera was European Capital of Culture in 2019. Today restored caves hold hotels, restaurants and museums, along with the Palombaro Lungo, a vast underground cistern.

Spring and early autumn suit Matera best. April, May, September and October bring mild days for walking the steps of the Sassi and the trails of the Murgia park. On 2 July the city celebrates its patron, the Madonna della Bruna, with a dawn procession, a parade of horsemen and the ritual destruction of a papier-mâché chariot in the cathedral square, a festival held since the fourteenth century.

July and August are hot and dry, and the stone of the Sassi holds the heat, though the cave rooms stay naturally cool. In winter the city is quiet and often misty, the lamps of the Sassi especially atmospheric after dark. Matera combines well with the Apulian coast, the trulli of the Itria Valley and the Tyrrhenian shore of Basilicata at Maratea.

Matera’s finest hotels are few and small, and both of the best are in the Sassi themselves. Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita, an albergo diffuso facing the Murgia across the ravine, keeps its caves deliberately austere, with candlelight, antique linen and bare rock. Aquatio Cave Luxury Hotel & SPA, in the Sasso Caveoso, has restored a group of caves around a spa set into the stone. LVXVRY advises on and arranges the stay directly.