Tourist information

Reservations and guided tours
Today Matera is a destination for many tourists who, intrigued by the goals the city has achieved in the last few decades, decide to visit it. The city offers numerous places to visit. Of course the Sassi are the main attraction, but the historic center with its palaces and splendid squares, which are overlooked by numerous and valuable medieval churches and the Murgia Materana Park with its many rock churches in it, are equally interesting. A large number of regularly qualified professional tour guides are ready to accompany you on many cultural and eno-gastronomic tours within the city and its beautiful surroundings. >> book your guided tour

Experiences in Matera
Reservations and guided tours Today Matera is a destination for many tourists who, intrigued by the goals the city has achieved in the last few decades, decide to visit it. The city offers numerous places to visit. Of course the Sassi are the main attraction, but the historic center with its palaces and splendid squares, which are overlooked by numerous and valuable medieval churches and the Murgia Materana Park with its many rock churches in it, are equally interesting. A large number of regularly qualified professional tour guides are ready to accompany you on many cultural and eno-gastronomic tours within the city and its beautiful surroundings. >> Book

Artigianato - Made in Matera
Matera is a small, welcoming and peaceful town with many beautiful things to do. Even simply walking in the Sassi or on the Murgia, enjoying the silence, observing the city that wakes up at dawn with its changing noises and colors, seeing the sun slowly make its way over the roofs of the houses and among the church bell towers up to flooding the squares and stairways of the Sassi can be a very beautiful and rewarding experience.

In Matera you can take part in cooking experiences to learn how to make fresh pasta or discover the secrets of the Matera bread by putting your hands in the dough in a real bakery. It is possible to visit the Sassi, the beautiful surrounding area of ​​the Murge or the small villages nearby with bicycles or on foot accompanied by expert guides in incredible photographic safaris to discover the historical archaeological and naturalistic heritage that only this incredible natural treasure chest that Matera is with its Murge preserves intact..>> Made in Matera

Museums and cultural places

Museums and places of culture
Matera is home to the Polo Museale of Basilicata which has 10 National Museums and several Archaeological Parks scattered throughout the region. The Museums and the archaeological areas show the occupation of the territory of Lucania from very remote times both by indigenous populations and those coming from the East relative to the first Neolithic migration that followed the Hellenic one.

Domenico Ridola National Archaeological Museum - Matera
The Domenico Ridola National Archaeological Museum was established in 1911 and is the oldest museum in Basilicata. The museum displays collections of naturalistic materials, ethnographic, artistic objects, and above all of precious archaeological finds collected by Ridola himself during the excavations he coordinated in the territory of Matera concerning Paleolithic and Neolithic settlements.

National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art of Basilicata
Also known as the Palazzo Lanfranchi Museum from the seventeenth-century building of the same name that houses the museum, it shows an exhibition that winds through the imposing structure in three sections: Sacred Art, Collectibles and Contemporary Art. The core of the collections are works on canvas, wooden and stone sculptures from the regional heritage. The other section is dedicated to the Quadreria D’errico composed of paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the Neapolitan school and the pictorial work of Carlo Levi which includes the large canvas dedicated to his homeland of Lucania 61.

Cultural places
The city of Matera was improperly defined in the second half of the twentieth century as a national shame because of the terrible living conditions in which the inhabitants of the Sassi, despite themselves, were forced to live after the war. A feeling of shame followed by a real cultural removal by the citizens who lived in the Sassi, contrasted with an idea of ​​revenge and redemption in the new generations that it brought, also thanks to the contributions and exchanges that took place there. it was with the artists and intellectuals who came to Matera that the situation was reversed and new and interesting cultural and social experiences were created in some places of the Sassi that today are fully part of the cultural and social fabric of the city.

MUSMA - Museo della Scultura Contemporanea Matera
It is the most important museum entirely dedicated to contemporary sculpture in Italy, the only one in the world to have exhibition spaces in caves. The exhibition area is located in the Sassi and occupies the entire historic building of the Pomarici family. In the hypogeum lower level the main theme is the union between environment and work of art while in the museum spaces of the "noble floor" a historical-chronological discourse of contemporary sculpture is developed starting from the masters Medardo Rosso and Arturo Martini, up to the most recent vanguards.

Casa Cava
Casa Cava is a multi-purpose cultural center entirely excavated in the rock situated in the Sassi of Matera set in a fascinating rocky complex that belongs to the Sasso Barisano. The central body is represented by a pit with a well, a particular quarry system that was used to extract the stone blocks for the buildings. Casa cava is a concert hall, a theater, an exhibition space and a convention center but also a tourist attraction within the Sassi of Matera. A place to visit where you have managed to achieve a perfect harmony between beauty and functionality.

Casa di Ortega
José Ortega arrives in Matera in October 1972 and comes into contact with artists and local intellectuals. There is an ideal place to live and work and establish valuable collaborations. In 1974 he bought a part of this house, now called La Casa di Ortega, a project designed to document the presence of the great Spanish artist in Matera and to promote the rediscovery and enhancement of the local artisan tradition. The exhibition areas host the works created by Ortega during his stay in Matera in the 70s.

Casa Noha
Casa Noha is a cultural facility of the FAI in the Sassi of Matera the structure is housed in an apartment donated to the foundation by a family from Matera who lived there until a few decades ago. Inside the building it is possible to watch the video "The invisible stones. An extraordinary journey through the history of Matera ". The film, projected on the walls, ceilings and floors of the rooms, offers the visitor a complete reconstruction of the history of the city of Matera from its origins to today.