Places to see in Matera

The cave districts cut into the ravine, lived in continuously for millennia, cleared by the state in the 1950s as a national disgrace and now a world heritage site full of hotels. Walking them is the visit — steep, stepped, and best done twice, once by day and once after dark when the whole bowl is lit.

A rock church driven into the spur that stands in the middle of the Sassi, with Byzantine frescoes inside and the best view over both districts from the terrace outside. Small, ticketed, and the clearest single explanation of how this place was built.

An enormous cistern hollowed out beneath the main square, fifteen metres deep and unknown to most of the town until the 1990s. Visited on a short guided walk down into it. Twenty minutes, directly under the café you were sitting at.

A cave dwelling left furnished as it was when families, and their animals, lived in one room here into the 1950s. Ten minutes and cheap, and it does more to make sense of the Sassi than any amount of walking above them.