Oops, maybe we got carried away: over 150 Cave Churces among Sassi and Murgia. Mostly with frescoes. Santa Lucia alle Malve, Santa Barbara, San Giovanni in Monterrone, San Nicola dei Greci… dozens of little masterpieces of medieval art, in a triumph of red, blue and gold over the naked rocky background. You should avoid it if you suffer from the Stendhal syndrome.

Ok, we are a little touchy about the bread. But our is the best in the world and the food is good, nay, delicious. If you know where to go, of course! If you’d like a route including a deep immersion in our food&wine, ask us. Our CEO weighs 95 kg, but his blood analysys are perfect: he eats a lot, but he eats well!

PS: About Batman, we’ve got the copyright on the Bat Cave… ask us why!

The Park of Murgia Materana is a show of colors and perfumes: thyme, garlic, oregano and rosemary are the perfect relish not only for our typical food, but also for our guided tours in the nature. Watch out though, behind every bush could hide a rupestrian monastery… or a fox!

Christ Stopped at Eboli? Well, in the end he found his way to Matera! In the first place, it was the genius of Pier Paolo Pasolini to sense the “biblical” dimension of Matera’s landscape (1964, “The Gospel According to Matthew”). After him, above all Beresford (1985, “King David”) and Mel Gibson (2004, “The Passion of Christ”) followed in his footsteps. Right now (2015) Timur Bekmambetov is filming the remake of Ben Hur, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Huston, among the others. Castings for walks-on are almost monthly. Hey, if you stay here a bit, you have dark hair and a beard, you could be in the next movie! Yes, also the women.

Matera has a long memory. Even if humans have been hanging around the city area for 500.000 years, they decided to stop here to live “just” 10.000 years ago. They soon started to shape the rock according to their needs, and so did every other people that came here in the next centuries. The rock, luckily for us, preserved their memories, from the neolithic trenched villages on the Murgia to the churches, monasteries and necropolises of the Early Middle Ages. Unluckily for us, it also preserved “Francesco <3 Lucia” and stuff like that. Stupid love.

The city-planning experiment that took place in Matera between ’50s and ’70s was a great success, expecially from an architectural point of view, and save the city from the cement barbarity that upset so many other italian cities in the postwar period. At least until the 80’s, when derogations to the original Quaroni’s city plan started and never ended. Hurry up, until there’s time!

The Sassi, beautiful, anarchical plot of alleys, houses, caves, wells, gardens and churches, represents the flagship of Matera, what gave her the prestigious international recognitions: she’s part of UNESCO Heritage and European Capital of Culture 2019. But it wasn’t always like this. They were once called “national shame”. So, what are their origins? Why did they take this shape? How people used to live here? We’ll start dismissing the greatest rubbish that someone tells the tourists: NO, there aren’t any dinosaurs’ prints and NO, S. Francis was never here to heal from leprosy. At most, you can see some munacidd!

This is our favorite. Would you like to live your experience in the “materana” way? For the materano there’s never hurry: “t’ha stè tranguill” (be cool), “nan m’azzeck” (I’m not in the mood), “nan t’ pigghionn v’lan” (let it be, don’t worry). We like to live our life in peace and quiet: breakfast, aperitif, a little chat, lunch, nap, coffee, a chat, aperitif, a chat, the “struscio in mezzo al corso” (a walk in the Old Town, always chatting of course). Ok, maybe we indulge in the chatter a little.

Not enough? Do you have other ideas or particular needs? Let us know, we’ll shape your experience on your needs and desires. How? Fill the form on the right, i. e.!