Matera is not just a destination to visit: it’s a place to experience, in every season. Each month of the year, the city of the Sassi and its surrounding area offer authentic experiences that awaken the senses, stir emotions, and create lasting memories.
We invite you on a twelve-month journey to discover an authentic land—rich in bold flavors, breathtaking landscapes, art, and spirituality. An invitation to slow down, savor, and immerse yourself. Because in Matera, every season is a good reason to set off.
January – February
A journey of taste in Matera is the local extra virgin olive oil, with an intense fruity. Let yourself be conquered by homemade pasta, from traditional dishes such as the “bean puree and chicory”, a poor dish but rich in flavor, or the extraordinary “pezzente” sausage.
Do not miss the opportunity to taste the many typical products of Basilicata, the Crusco pepper, the pecorin cheeses, with a decisive and aromatic taste, accompanied by artisan cold cuts such as the suppressed and the Lucanian sausage and accompanies each meal with a glass of Aglianico del Vulture or one of the many excellent wines that have imposed themselves in the attention of the experts and the public.
March – April
The tradition, the roots, the history of these rites related to carnival recreate a magical and mysterious world, thanks to the typical masks, and strengthen the idea of local identity and cultural heritage, allowing participants to retrace a path backwards towards a rural, but authentic past.
You just have to come and visit these places and let you capture from the magic of the carnival.
Between the ancient districts and the historic center of the city, in the many churches that make up an itinerary in itself to get to know Matera and its territory, it is possible to follow suggestive celebrations of the Christian tradition, from the consecration of the oils to the visit to the sepulchres, up to the ritual procession, the highest and most painful point of popular religiosity, with the statue of the dead Christ brought by the faithful during the “Holy Friday” via Crucis.
The sensations thrilled by the penalties of the winter season begin to prepare for the awakening. The FAI Spring Days, an appointment now constant and consolidated, are an opportunity to make unexpected and, above all, unique because they are often unrepeatable, oriented as they are not always visited, sometimes even inaccessible, always fascinating.
May – June
This is undoubtedly the ideal time to appreciate the rebirth of nature in all its forms, to recognize the smells and sounds of a renewed flora and fauna, to savor its colors, breathe the open air and contemplate the enchantment of breathtaking views. Matera and its surroundings offer itineraries and paths of great charm, for those who want to try their hand and try, in contact with the environment and the traditional rural culture, the beauty of a type of particular tourism, with a high degree of authenticity, interiority, thickness. Matera is “Porta dei Parchi”, the first landing place to get to know and live all the parks of Basilicata.
Strictly marked in phases and days, it ends with the demolition of May, on the day of Corpus Domini.
During the year, numerous sanctuaries and local communities celebrate the Virgin Mary with suggestive rites and processions that wind through breathtaking landscapes. Imagine witnessing the shoulder transport of the Black Madonna of Viggiano to the Sacro Monte, an event full of popular devotion.
In the Borghi del Pollino, you can participate in the processions that accompany the Marian statues adorned with flowers on the mountain paths.
Each Marian rite in Basilicata is unmkeep1endmkeepanima more true than this land, an intertwining of faith, history and folklore that will be able to touch the heart of every traveler in search of authentic and spiritually significant experiences. A journey between these rites is an unprecedented and profound way to get to know Basilicata. Even just a few kilometers from the center of Matera, as for the Sanctuary of Santa Maria di Picciano: an ancient monastery with a long history of Marian devotion.
Five days of meetings, projections and events. We press the best TV series in competition. We organize thematic exhibitions, workshops and higher training courses. On these and many other aspects we aim to open a privileged and exclusive cultural window every year on the world.
All Matera Fiction activities is free while seats last.
from: www.piellematera.it
July – August
The beaches of the “Metapontino”
The coasts of Magna Grecia can be the ideal landing for the tourist who loves to relax and have fun, between sunball lines and refrigerant sea baths. But it also represents an unmissable opportunity for those who want to travel and know the origins of our civilization, tracing the footsteps, on the steps of ancient archaeological sites and historical monuments of the classical age. The Ionian coast reserves pleasant surprises for those who decide to choose the beaches of Matera for their summer holidays.
September – October
This episode above all, particularly expensive and painful, is important because Matera was the first city of the South to arise weapons in hand against Nazi-fascism. For each Materan, it is right and right to keep that sad and glorious day of September 21, 1943, in which 26 people, 18 of which civilians, died in life.
A memory that still unites the wound of the condolence with the redemption of pride. But this date is also that of the traditional feast of Sant’Eustachio, a Christian martyr with all his family and patron of Matera since 994, a figure that legend wants to have saved the city from the Saracen invader.
A festival that, since the first edition, is characterized by transmedia and attention to the new languages that also belong to the world of cinema, such as: music, comics, literature and gaming, animation cinema, new technologies, IA.
Since the first edition, about four hundred works from the national and international cinematographic panorama, retrospectives, previews, tributes to great authors, recently production, unpublished works by emerging authors, masterpieces of the history of cinema, exhibitions, installations, projections and activities for schools, concerts, animation cinemas, workshops, masterclasses, meetings with the authors and much more were presented.
An opportunity for meeting and knowledge, in -depth analysis and research, of leisure and fun, which involves thousands of spectators, professionals in the sector, stakeholders.
Internationally renowned artists and filmmakers, cinema legends and authors were present and rewarded
In a possible itinerary, an indispensable stop is certainly the “Ridola” National Archaeological Museum, the first in Basilicata. In the section dedicated to prehistory, probably the best known, it collects an extraordinary amount of important Paleolithic and Neolithic finds. Since the end of 2022, a new set -up dedicated to the remains of the Giuliana whale has been inaugurated, lived a million years ago and, almost certainly, with its 26 meters in length, the largest cetacean ever lived in the Mediterranean.
No less interesting, in this ideal path, can undoubtedly be visits to the museum-laboratory of the peasant civilization, the National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture (Musma) and the Noha House and many other sites of great interest.
The lukewarm autumn, also in Matera and its surroundings, proves to be with its peculiar charm: the reddish yellow color of the foliage, to soften the vegetation of a discreet and mild, almost melancholy beauty; food and wine itineraries to embellish the ways of taste; The magical and ancient ritual of the olive collection, which are transformed into the typical Lucanian new oil, with an intense green color; Or again, the smell and flavor of chestnuts around the bonfires, to create a quiet and thin sociability. If October is the month of walks in the woods, two destinations to suggest are undoubtedly the Bosco di Verrutoli, near Irsina, and the chestnuts located a few steps from Bernalda.
November – December
A “narrative” nativity scene, could be defined, with actors and figures that represent, in an engaging itinerant theater, the fundamental stages of the Nativity, and where faith acquires body and soul, becomes the manifestation of a spirituality at the same time tangible, intimate and solemn.
Whether it is the party in the square or dinner in one of the many restaurants in the alleys of the Sassi, spending the New Year in Matera is not an option, it is a fundamental experience.
