3-Day Matera Cave House Experience – Italy

Today you’ll arrive in Matera, a town famous for the Sassi, or cave houses, as well as its churches carved into rock. You’ll stay in a hotel with fascinating cave dwellings. Your room is spacious and furnished with great attention to detail. Whole families used to live in the Sassi, together with their chickens, a donkey and other animals. Many of the men you see in Matera were shepherds who spend much of the year in the mountains.

Fill up with a nice breakfast on your terrace this morning, as you’ll need the energy to explore the city, especially with the amount of stairs in the old part of the city. To make sure you don’t miss anything, follow the itinerario turistisco, the tourist route, to beautiful views and unexpected corners of the city. The Piazza Duomo shouldn’t be missed during your walk, along with climbing to the highest point of the city, with wonderful views of Sasso Barisano on one side and Sasso Caveoso on the other.

Time to leave Matera, but not before visiting the National Park opposite the city. Here you will find rock churches and abandoned cave dwellings, so you can see exactly how people used to live. Then you can choose to travel to Maratea, where you can hike through a river, or travel further to Ostuni, where you sleep in a white, cone-shaped trulli house and learn to cook delicious, local dishes.