One of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, Matera's ancient sassi (cave dwellings) tumble down a ravine in southern Italy's Basilicata region, looking much as they have for 9,000 years. A former city of poverty that now UNESCO World Heritage-listed and European Capital of Culture, Matera is the unlikely resurrection story of the century.
Carlo Levi, exiled here in 1935 by the Fascist government, wrote of Matera’s sassi: “No one has touched a stone or changed its position.” He meant it as indictment — the poverty of the cave dwellings, the malaria, the near-medieval conditions in this ravine city in southern Italy’s instep. By 1952, the Italian government had forcibly evacuated the 15,000 people living in the sassi, deeming them a national embarrassment. Matera became a byword for southern Italian backwardness.
What happened next is one of travel’s great reversals. In 1993, UNESCO declared the sassi a World Heritage Site. In 2019, Matera was European Capital of Culture. The cave dwellings where families slept alongside their animals within living memory are now some of the most coveted hotel rooms in Italy.
The two sassi districts, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, stack down the sides of the Gravina ravine in a tangle of cave homes, church facades, cisterns, and staircases that has no real equivalent in Europe. From the Belvedere viewpoint across the gorge, the city reads as almost geological rather than architectural — as if the buildings grew from the rock rather than were built onto it. That impression holds up at close range. Much of the city is the rock.
Matera is the undisputed capital of the cave hotel. The best properties have turned ancient palazzi and cave systems into accommodation of genuine quality: exposed tuff walls, candlelit wine cellars, private terraces above the ravine, breakfast served in vaulted rooms that once stored grain. The Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita, a restored cave complex in the Sasso Caveoso, sets the standard for the genre globally.
The Gravina gorge opposite the sassi holds dozens of rupestrian cave churches cut directly into the rock face, many with Byzantine frescoes intact. Very few visitors cross the ravine to find them — which is exactly the reason to go. A morning with a local guide in the Murgia Materana park, climbing into cave chapels only accessible by goat trails, shows you the Matera that the hotels cannot.
Basilicata’s cooking is built on chilli, hand-rolled pasta, ancient grain breads, and sheep’s milk cheeses unchanged for centuries. Sit in a small restaurant cut into a cave wall, order the cialledda, drink the Aglianico del Vulture, and Matera’s transformation from embarrassment to one of Italy’s most arresting cities feels entirely earned.
April–June and September–October
Spring brings wildflowers to the Gravina ravine and mild temperatures ideal for exploring the sassi on foot. Autumn is golden and quieter than summer. July–August is the hottest and busiest period, the city is beautiful but crowded and very hot by afternoon. Winter is cold but magical, with far fewer visitors.
Visa
Visa-free for US, EU, UK, Canadian, Australian, and most Western citizens. Part of the Schengen Area. 90-day limit.
Cave rooms cut into Matera's Sasso Caveoso district, with rough tuff-stone walls and vaulted ceilings left as the 9,000-year-old rock formed them. Breakfast is served in a Rupestrian church where medieval frescoes still mark the walls.
Eighteen cave chambers in Matera's ancient sassi district, restored to expose their original tuff-stone walls and vaulted ceilings rather than conceal them — a city once called 'the shame of Italy' now home to one of its most sought-after hotels.