I have been to Matera a couple of times before and it is hauntingly beautiful. The photos never do it justice. I had been to this hotel before, many years ago but hadn’t remembered the journey to it, the ups and downs of the stairs, dragging out bags in the heat, so we were slightly exhausted upon arrival. I had been raving about this place and it's weird beauty but I could tell the companion wasn't impressed.
We were shown to our room but it was small and not like the room I had booked, with a tiny window. I told the lady that I had been here thirteen years ago and I was hoping for a larger room as was advertised and suddenly we were shown to a beautiful cave room with a little terrace and a view that embraced the whole of this strangely eerie yet stunning town.
The whole place is carved out of the tufa rock. People lived here since prehistoric times until the 1950’s when they were forced to move out to a Mussolini designated new town that was built for them and had electricity and water. Before then there were constant outbreaks of malaria and disease and it became a ghost town until recently when they began to restore the town making hotels in the cave dwellings. I stand and look out from our veranda over the honey coloured dwellings and dipping in and out are the swallows and the lesser kestrels that live here and claim it as their own. They swoop in between the buildings, fattened by the bugs in the air at dusk and dawn. It was here that I sat a few years ago and watched the swallows and decided that one day I would have a tattoo of one, symbolising the freedom of their constant movements and last year I got one.
We went for lunch at Nadi ristorante and I had an amazing chicken dish. It was layers of chicken and thinly sliced eggplant with a creamy tomato sauce. The bread here is golden as the wheat in the south is famous. We dip it in the green olive oil and have our favourite green - cime di rapa and life is good. That night as we look out over the town, the church bells ring across from us and then they are followed one after the other from the other churches, all different.
We dine in a cave restaurant on homemade tagliatelle and thin slices of truffle and wandering home, the city is transformed into gold, the street lights gilding the warm stone, a waning moon above us.
I remembered this hotel because of its breakfast. It’s amazing. We juice blood red oranges, there are the wonderful breads of the region and one I will always remember - focaccia style bread brushed with rich spicy olive oil and sprinkled with sugar, it’s divine, the contrasting flavours, the crunch of the sugar crystals.
We wander up and down the winding staircases in and out of the cave like structures and that afternoon we go for a tour in a little ape ute or wasp as the Italians call it, converted for tourists and we’re shown the old caves across the valley where people lived once, the tombs and churches cut into the hillside and the fossilised shells in the buildings here. That night we become obsessed looking for them. The earth is extraordinary, pushing up mountains full of shells in the middle of Italy.
On our last night in Matera, we wander and find a beautiful gallery filled with the cuckoo whistles ‘cucu’ whose sound is recreated by breathing into the whistle. They are painted in vibrant colours to help ward off evil spirits and we buy a couple of small ones but I would have loved one of the bigger ones, they’re beautiful.
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