Planning your first visit to Matera?
Matera is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. If this is your first time visiting Matera it can however feel quite overwhelming when it comes to planning your trip.
In this article we share all our best tips for visiting Matera. We will show you how to make the most of your visit.
Sassi
Sassi are the top tourist attraction and a must-see.
We suggest you pay attention to all the details you will see while walking. Sassi are suggestive and they may appear as a chaotic sequence of alleys and houses.
There are lots of rock churches: some of them are completely carved into the rock, others have only a masonry façade, others are completely built. All of them have valuable paintings testifying the great cave painting.
Furthermore, Sassi have had their fair share of screen time. Lots of movies were made in Matera, such as “Il Vangelo secondo Matteo” by Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The Passion” by Mel Gibson and more recently “No time to die” the latest movie about James Bond. It’s very simple to discover some of the best Matera film locations that have been featured in big screen hits.
Modern City Center
In the modern city center of Matera there are buildings and churches.
The first building was Palazzo Lanfranchi, nowadays it hosts the “Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Basilicata”; furthermore, stand out the church of Purgatorio in tardo – Baroque style, the church of San Giovanni Battista, one of the architectural jewels of Matera, and the Baroque church of San Francesco d’Assisi.
Modern Neighborhoods and Rural Villages
There are reasons to visit the modern neighborhoods and the rural villages. Matera is made up of modern neighborhoods built in the Fifties to welcome peasants coming from Sassi; each neighborhood and each village have their own character and style.
They come from avant garde movements and are packed full of architectural gems.
Murgia Area
The whole Murgia area is the result of the merger between geological elements and historical-cultural processes. From the Paleolothic until today, man has constantly inhabited this land. In the whole area there are sites of historical, artistic and cultural interest, very important for better understanding the area, including an entrenched Neolithic village and several rupestrian churches. They classified about one hundred and fifty places of worship. The rock culture has left traces and examples of artistic excellence, among which the Cripta del Peccato Originale (Not to be missed!).
The Museums
Matera is a great city for culture with some museums to enjoy.
Want to explore the processes of human settlement in the area of Matera and in the whole region? There is the “Archeological National Museum “Domenico Ridola”” where you can see the finds dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic.
Then a stroll to the “National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art of Basilicata” housed in Palazzo Lanfranchi will shift focus to modern art.
Rather learn about contemporary sculpture? Pay a visit to the MUSMA (Museum of Contemporary Sculpture of Matera), housed in the seventeenth century Palazzo Pomarici, which is the only museum entirely dedicated to sculpture.
Plan your holiday in Matera and get in touch with us for further information.
