What is Matera known for?

UNESCO-listed since 1993; emptied by law in 1952, called the shame of Italy, reoccupied as boutique hotels and homes from the 1980s onward. Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ in 2004 and No Time to Die in 2019; the Bond shoot brought twelve million euros into the city. IGP wheat bread with a horn shape and seventy-two-hour ferment, baked in wood ovens from semola di grano duro.

Matera is a comune in the province of Matera, Basilicata region of Italy, about 65 kilometers from Bari.

Basilicata · Matera

Matera

Cave dwellings carved into limestone since the Paleolithic, called the shame of Italy in the 1950s and made European Capital of Culture in 2019.

65 km / 40 mi

Nearest hub (Bari)

59,685

Population

Apr–Oct

Best time to visit

Recognised as

Why come

Matera sitson the edge of the Gravina ravine in eastern Basilicata, fifty-five kilometers inland from Bari. The Sassi, two districts of houses, churches and cisterns hollowed from tufa limestone, are among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on earth, with traces of human presence from the Paleolithic. Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano dropped down the canyon walls; people lived there with their animals into the 1950s. Carlo Levi's 1945 book and the 1948 photographs that followed turned the Sassi into a national scandal, and a 1952 law moved twenty thousand residents to new housing on the plateau above. The caves stayed empty for thirty years. UNESCO listed them in 1993. Mel Gibson shot The Passion of the Christ here in 2004 and the city was European Capital of Culture in 2019; No Time to Die filmed in the Sassi in 2019, bringing twelve million euros into the local economy. Bread, ceramics, and rock churches across the Gravina anchor what is now Basilicata's only mass-tourism destination.

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Gallery

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Known for

Sassi di Matera
Two districts of cave dwellings, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, carved from tufa limestone and inhabited continuously from the Paleolithic until the 1950s evictions.
Cattedrale della Madonna della Bruna e di Sant'Eustachio
Thirteenth-century Apulian Romanesque cathedral on the highest point of the Civita, between the two Sassi, with rose window and bell tower.
Chiese rupestri del Parco della Murgia
More than 150 rock-cut churches scattered across the Gravina canyon, frescoed between the eighth and thirteenth centuries by Italo-Greek monks.
Casa Grotta nei Sassi
Reconstructed cave dwelling preserved as a museum, showing how families, livestock and grain lived together in a single rock room until the 1952 eviction law.
Gravina di Matera
Limestone canyon below the Sassi, crossed by a footbridge to the rupestrian church park on the opposite cliff.
Castello Tramontano
Aragonese castle commissioned in 1501 by Count Giovan Carlo Tramontano, who was killed by townspeople before it was finished; three of the original twelve towers stand.

When to visit

Best months · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

April through June and September into October are the months Matera was built for. The light slants across the tufa façades in the late afternoon and turns the Sassi gold. July and August are punishing: temperatures cross thirty-five degrees and the canyon walls hold the heat past midnight, though hotels stay full because the Bond and Gibson tourism waves have not subsided. November through March is the quiet season; many Sasso restaurants close on weekdays and the rupestrian churches sit empty most mornings. The Festa della Bruna falls on 2 July, when a papier-mâché chariot is paraded through town and then torn apart by the crowd at midnight in front of the cathedral.