Matera, Italy: Beautiful, Walkable, Worth It

Morning.

Welcome to today's video. We're in Martina Franca. We've left Otranto, took us about two hours motorway. We're on our way to Matera, so we thought we'd just stop up, have a look at Martina before we carry on.

So we're going to see if we can stick to our €350 a day budget, including everything bar our flights. So come along with us as we explore the Villa Franco, Martina Martino and Matea Matera.

Matera.

I'm useless at knowing the places, but hopefully they're beautiful anyway. And they. They look better than I pronounce them. If you're tired of the crowded Puglia locations like Alba Rabello, then maybe Martina.

Franca is the place to come and visit. In 1310 it gained tax free Franca privileges, then flourished into a baroque town.

Of palaces and the Basilica di San.

Martino it's lived in local and blissfully so much quieter.

Maybe this is the real Puglia that you wanted to discover. Having a wander around Martina Franca and all the little lanes doesn't seem to be a lot besides the square and the cathedral. That is very impressive. It's funny, we were just saying after a while of seeing so many beautiful old towns like this, you become a little bit blase, don't you? Oh, look, there's another beautiful church or another lovely alleyway.

Martina Frank is definitely worth pruning on the mat to go and see.

Yeah, and we've managed to get away from the awful weather and the thunderstorms and you can see we're in blue sky again and it's about 27 degrees, so it's a lot cooler than yesterday, but it's still pretty hot, isn't it? Anyway, so we just stopped lunch at a quite funky place. I can't remember what this is called, but we've had the kind of tapas mixture of all their local foods for €12, so not bad, but it'll be enough because we're not hungry. And James has got a matcha coffee, leche coffee. And I've got an orange juice, so we shall enjoy it.

After lunch, we finished our drive to Matera, parked the car in the nearest car park, which was still a 15 to 20 minute walk up and down cobbled streets, and arrived at our hotel.

Hello, welcome to our hotel, Maison Dax in Madeira. After a bit of a hike from the car park, going up and down steps to get here, we've just been checked in. She told us that electricity wasn't working, but thankfully it's working in our room because it's really warm. But anyway, really nice room. So we have a lovely four poster bed and slightly bizarrely the shower in the room. So if you're staying here with your best friend or a friend, you may not want to stay here. Although you could use that. Oh yeah, look at the view. Spectacular. Obviously we'll show you way more of that later on. Yeah, yeah, it's really nice. It's got a lot of character. And then the little bathroom. When James is doing number twos that stink, it's not going to mask that. And a toilet and a bidet in the very kind of nice between start and there's some Spanish balls on the wall. So that is our room at Maison Tax. It's cost about the same as the other rooms we've had to pay. Bear in mind, when you're staying in Italy, you have to pay city tax on top of what you booked, which is €2 per person per day. And we've also reserved our parking. We'll talk a bit more about that later in advance. So we have that for three days at €20 a day. It's quite a hike from here to the car park, so it'll be fun on Sunday when we're flying home pretty early.

Talk about a room with a view.

I don't think you're going to find a better view than that. And over the next few days we're going to be exploring the beauty of of Mattea and the history. Then outside of our room is a nice little seating area. I think there's only about four rooms in this place. There's another room here and then this little indoor area.

Seats.

Fascinating to know what this building was. Yeah, there's another room there. There's James. We're ready for. Ready for our aperol and to do a little bit of exploring tonight. But we're going to save most of it for the next couple of days. Get a sense of how our hotel is built into the Airbnb is built into the rocks, which I suspect a lot of places are. We'll talk about the history of Matera a little bit later, but lots of steps. So if you do come here, be mindful that there's going to be a lot of walking and a lot of steps. Look at how lovely the doors are behind. It's cloudy now, a bit of blue sky. So it's a bit cooler, which is just as well because it's really very humid. Seems appropriate to start our time in Matera with an Apollos Spritz. So we're gonna chill out here for.

A while, watch the world go by.

And then plan out where we're gonna eat and what we're gonna do tomorrow. Which was one of the restaurants the hotel recommended and also high up in TripAdvisor. We've ordered a glass of house white wine, which is actually really nice. And we've got some little bruschetta. Okay, our starter has arrived which is the cheese and ham mix platter with some chutneys. Looks very nice served in a lettuce beef. Our main course has arrived. I've got the pasta with fresh tomatoes and pesto and James got a salad with a few other bits due to arrive as well. Good morning from our first full day in Matera and we are gonna go exploring. It's going to be another really hot day today. Just a little bit of history about Matera. So it goes way back to the Paleolithic era. And the little holes you can see in the mountainside are called Sassi and that's where people used to live right up until the mid-1900s. But it was also known as the poorest part of Italy because there's no sanitation. Living standards were awful. And someone all over Dobhu wrote a book about the place and it alerted the government and the public to it and there was a bit of outcry and basically the government moved everyone away from here. But it was also then named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And since the mid 20th century it sort of re. Re established itself, rebranded itself. Lots of hotels and restaurants have cropped up and now it's become a super trendy place to come and visit like we are visiting too. So we're going to go and have a look around and see what we think of it and take you along with us.

Not bad for our view from our balcony.

Yeah, this is the view from. From our balcony. So pretty spectacular way to end to wake up in the morning. Feels like we've got the place to ourselves at the moment it's quarter to 10 and we're gonna go over to church. Oh yeah, gonna go over to the church.

Madonna de Idris.

Sam. Amazing views. We're halfway up to the top of the church. This is a little town square. If I sound out of breath, it's because I am.

James.

Here is the church you can see with the sun built into the to the cave. Pretty impressive. That's a views all the way around. It's amazing really, isn't it that this place has evolved into what it has evolved into. Because it's so difficult getting here with our luggage, let alone all the building materials that must have been lugged up here. Then this is the view from the other side off the church. And there's a bridge on the other side of this building. You can't see that. You can climb down that pathway, walk across, and then you can just see people over there and they go all the way up. Apparently up there is a really pretty park and that's where a lot of people go for sunset. You can also drive there as well. But I'm not sure we'll be doing either of those things. I had a nice tea. James had a cafe, Cafe Le Chese, which is the espresso with an almond syrup and it cost €4.

Pitera is split into two regions, the old Town and the New Town. And the New Town has shops and more churches and cathedrals because it was the wealthier part back in the day.

Compared to the area that we've just shown you around. Walked for a bit and we're in almost like a normal square again. Very nice. That's where we just were over there, Going into the caves. So we just stopped for lunch here, which is a lunch with a lovely view. We've ordered the meat and cheese platter, which is actually 50, which is €15.

Right.

It comes with some bread. And we've also ordered some. Some panzerotti have just arrived. We got a assortment of four. They were €5, weren't they? So that's not a bad price. These are the fried dough with like. Well, I don't know what the fillings are, but the ones we had were tomato, mozzarella. They were yummy. So we've come to a proper gelato place. Really interesting flavor as well. Okay. I'm being brave having lavender and coconut. The lavender is an interesting flavor. What you're having milk and give the lavender a go. I'm not quite sure what I think it's not my favorite flavor. But hey, trying something new. Turn a corner and you discover another lovely old church. Treat from. So after a bit of faffing around, we managed to decide where to come for dinner. James is having a small meat and cheese platter and I'm having spaghetti with courgettes and bacon. That was lovely. Really, really nice. Very nice. Mine was 18, so it was about 16 pounds. And James is 28. Apparently there's 400 and 450 restaurants in Matera, so you can go to different restaurants every day of the year. We've tried a few it's nice just wandering around now in the cool evening and everyone that's out and about sa.

Good morning. Sadly it's our last day in Matera and the plan today is to go to a museum and learn an awful lot more about the history which was both cool and well worthwhile doing. But first some coffee.

So just stop for a coffee before we go for our tour. I've got a cappuccino. James has got a. Which is espresso and almond syrup and we've got two espresso. We've got two of these little pastries which look very nice.

Beneath Matera's streets we step into the Matharium a set of caves or hyper gym to give them their correct name. Right in the heart of the new town of Matera. In this hypogym under the sassy homes were carved not built. Families once lived in these thousand square meter caves where they made bread, pressed olives and wine rested in the cool constant temperatures. People working here stayed underground for months on end lit only by oil lamps. Can you imagine in this exhibition the walls came alive with 360 degree press projections. 15 stories flickering across the stone. Showing how a house evolves when rock is your only material. As we move through the narrow corridors, the soundscape shifted. You could almost hear the ancient sea that shaped this limestone long before us. This was a fascinating and well worth visit to learn more about the true history of this place.

What do you think of that James?

That was brilliant. Definitely worth doing.

Yeah.

I'd highly recommend giving you an idea of what the history is about.

And it's nice and cool as well, which is a big bonus on a hot day like today. How much is this?

13.

€13 for two pizza y things and two you got the same day. We actually haven't really seen the cathedral except for walking past it on the way here. You want to go into the cathedral. It is 3:50 to get in. But we've seen enough of the inside of churches. You become a bit blase in the end. But if that's your thing, I think you can buy a ticket that gets you in everywhere. What was it? About 12 or €13. It gets you into all their historic buildings. I'm walking away from the cathedral down into the old.

So we're at Al Dua Sassi for our last night. Little it looked really small from the outside but then you turn up on the.

Yeah.

And some native things. But great view. Great views of the.

Caves for our last supper. Yeah. So what are you having?

I'm Having the antipasti as usual.

I'm having the arrabiata pasta and the tomato salad, Capri salad and some nice bread. I think we're both quite hungry because we've had two apparels. A bit drunk, but we've got a bottle of wine coming because they don't do it by the glass. So we are coming to the end of our time in Matera and also the end of our time in Italy. So we've had three days here. What do you think about Matera, Jones? What's your recommendation?

It's absolutely stunning. Definitely put it on your list. If you're coming down to southern Italy, it's only an hour from Bari airport. First thing to do, I would suggest, do that immersive multimedia on the history of that gives you an appreciation when you walk around and you kind of see all the caves and everything. Yeah, it's just stunning. Yeah, very biblical.

Very nice. Bring strong walking shoes, lots of energy to walk all over the place. Definitely worth a visit. And if you were to sum up this whole trip, what would you say about it?

It's a brilliant part of the country. If you've been to Italy before, in Belame, come down to Puglia and Basilicata, it's completely different. There's a cat that just jumped down that cliff.

Yeah. I mean, obviously a lot of people.

Go to Tuscany or they go to Rome or they go to Venice. And this is a part of Italy that a lot of Brits especially don't come to. And so there's a lot of Italians here because I think they come and vacation here. I think if we were to do it again, maybe we'd do it as slightly slower pace. I think we're both going home a little bit exhausted. But we've been to 10 cities in nine days and we leave for the airport really early tomorrow morning.

Now, as you would have seen, we managed quite comfortably to survive on a budget of €175 per person, staying in Nice, three to four star hotels, eating out, having drinks and not really scrimping too much.

So it is definitely doable. And as you saw, we only opened.

Overspent on one day. So I hope you've enjoyed this short series on southern Italy. Make sure you hit the subscribe button.

And we will see you next week.