What to do and see in Matera, Basilicata: The Best Museums

A restored XVI century building with court located in via San Giovanni Vecchio 60 (Sasso Barisano) is the home of the 500 m2 large Museo Laboratorio della Civiltà Contadina (Museum-Workshop of the Peasant Culture). The exhibition rooms are dedicated to the ancient trades related to the work in the fields but also to all the other handicraft activities carried on in the ancient quarters of Matera: sieve-maker, tanner, shepherd, basket-maker, cavamonti, shoe-shiner, barber, cabinet-maker, mastro d'ascia, blacksmith, tailor, conciapiatti, potter, knife-grinder, saddler, coppersmith, cobbler, peasant, scalpellino. Also, various every-day tools are exposed: farm tools, equipment for storage and processing of wheat, weaving equipment. Other rooms are dedicated to daily-life places - such as the public wine cellar and the typical house - and themes related to the South-Italy history such as brigandage, childhood condition and water-harvesting. The Museo-Laboratorio aims to be a dynamic structure among the tourism products of Matera and a reference for the development of the culture of the past through exhibition and educational activities.

Matera Olive Oil Museum(MOOM). Reconstructed in an ancient underground oil mill in Sassi of Matera. RESERVATION IS NEEDED! PLEASE CALL US TO ASK A VISIT!

In this House Cave you immerse yourself in the life and in the most intimate memories of what life was like once. also from Casa Grotta you can go to visit the Laboratory-Museum of Art and Sacred Nativity carved entirely by hand under Piazza Vittorio Veneto in the center of Matera. A visit to the Casa Grotta "Ponticello" is one of the few opportunities to realize what life was like in houses dug in

The museum "Racconti in Pietra",which translated means "Tales of Stones",proposes a time travel suitable for children, telling a piece of history,the earliest one,of the territory sorrounding Matera in a fresh and new way.Get ready to meet dinosaurs,the "Giuliana" whale and footprints of creatures from earlier times. Come to visit us in Vico San Leonardo 9,in the heart of the "Sassi di Matera".

The narrating cave house is composed of various rooms. At the entrance the warm welcome puts the visitor at ease, who will be able to admire, in addition to the richness of the promotional material, the variety of the works made mostly of terracotta and made attractive by their lively polychromy. the "Cucu" artifact is characteristic.

Matera Sassi Storica Casa Grotta - di vico Solitario: Typically Furnished Cave Dwelling To see what a real peasant dwelling was like before the “Sassi” of Matera were abandoned, visit a typical cave dwelling with furniture and tools of the time in the “Sasso Caveoso”. The description of the Cave Dwelling in English language is available inside. Open all year round.

The MUSMA, internationally recognized for its unique cave exhibition spaces, is the most important museum entirely dedicated to sculpture in Italy. MUSMA occupies the spaces of the 17th Century Palazzo Pomarici and was inaugurated on October 14th, 2006. In ancient caves carved-out of limestone over time, there are works of art which tell the story of Italian and international sculpture from the late 1800s to today and seem to have found their “natural home”. The fullness and emptiness of sculpture appear extraordinarily complementary to the positive and negative spaces of the Sassi architecture. From the underground rooms, we pass into the noble palace, onto the first floor where the works are arranged in chronological order and are framed by elegant vaults and cornices.