Matera & Beyond: 3 Days of Magic

After arriving in Matera, I checked into the Sant’Angelo Resort, nestled right in the heart of the Sassi, and stepped into my cave room with genuine excitement—and, I’ll admit, a little nervous curiosity about what sleeping inside a rock face would actually feel like. I needn’t have worried: the room is flooded with light and thoughtfully designed, while still preserving that completely otherworldly atmosphere. It is a once-in-a-lifetime room category, full stop.

That afternoon, we set out on a walking tour of the Sassi—the two ancient cave districts of Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso, a labyrinth of dwellings, cisterns, and rock-hewn churches built one on top of the other, carved directly into the tufa cliffside over thousands of years. It is the best way to get to know and understand this amazing place. Our guide brought the history to life: how the Italian government forcibly evacuated residents in the 1950s, deeming the conditions inhumane, and how decades later, UNESCO and a wave of restoration transformed this so-called national shame into a World Heritage Site and, in 2019, a European Capital of Culture. It is one of the great comeback stories in travel.

I could live on bread and cheese, so today was one of my favorite days. We made our way to Altamura, a city in Puglia that takes its bread more seriously than almost anywhere else in Italy—and rightfully so. Pane di Altamura holds a DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) certification, making it the first bread in all of Europe to receive that distinction. What sets it apart is everything: the ancient durum wheat varieties grown only in this region, the local water, the traditional shaping, and a baking process so carefully preserved that the resulting loaf stays fresh for up to two weeks without a single preservative. We visited a bakery that has been in the same family for five generations—meeting the grandfather, father, and son together, each one a keeper of this tradition—and learned firsthand what makes every step of the process so deliberate and so extraordinary.

From there, we headed to Baby Dicecca, a hidden gem of a cheese farm and restaurant tucked into the forest, where we watched mozzarella being made by hand and heard the story of how this magical place came to be. Lunch was the kind of meal you close your eyes to savor—simple, impeccably fresh, and deeply local. It is the kind of day that reminds you why food is always the best way into a culture.

We drove back to Matera and settled in for a quiet evening watching the city light up—and there is truly no other way to describe it than a fairy tale.

I woke up early and walked over to the other cliff of Matera—it was a beautiful way to start the morning and see the city from a completely different perspective—before coming back for a leisurely breakfast and heading south toward Taranto. Known as the “City of Two Seas,” Taranto sits on a dramatic peninsula between two bays and carries one of the oldest histories in southern Italy.

On the way, we stopped in Grottaglie, a small town that has been producing ceramics for seven centuries and is considered Italy's most important ceramics town. Its medieval Quartiere delle Ceramiche is not a tourist reconstruction—it is a living, working craft district where artisans still throw and paint clay by hand in workshops passed down through generations. We visited the house of Mimmo, one of those stops that feels like a true privilege, the kind you only find when you know where to look.

We then checked into Relais Histò, a breathtaking 14th-century masseria set within a 70-hectare private park of ancient olive trees, with sweeping views of the sea. The property has a remarkable history of its own—once a Greek settlement, then a Roman villa, later a monastery, and eventually a fortified farmhouse. We took the hotel bikes out explored the grounds, which are expansive and peaceful, including a beautiful church right on the property. The spa here is the largest in southern Italy—1,800 square meters of wellness—and I highly recommend carving out time for the hydrotherapy experience. It is the kind of place that slows you all the way down, in the very best way.