Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita, Matera: What a Night Really Costs — and Who Should Book Elsewhere

A night in one of the 18 cave rooms at Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita runs roughly €250–€450 for a double, with the largest suites climbing past €600 in high season. It is open year-round, breakfast is included and served in a deconsecrated rock-cut church lit by candles, and the whole thing sits inside the UNESCO-listed Sassi di Matera in Basilicata, southern Italy. If that sounds like the best night of the trip, it probably will be. If you want a bright room, a bathtub with a view over the ravine, or air that does not smell faintly of wet limestone, book a different Matera hotel — and there are excellent ones.

What you are actually booking

These are real cave dwellings on the northern slope above the Gravina ravine, occupied until the Sassi were forcibly cleared in the 1950s and 60s as la vergogna nazionale — the national shame. The hotel opened in 2009 under the same project that restored Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Abruzzo, and the restoration philosophy is deliberately austere: the cave is not converted into a normal room, the room is left as a cave.

In practice that means:

• No televisions, no minibars, no bright overhead lighting. Beeswax candles in wall niches do most of the work after dark, supplemented by discreet electric light.
• Beds are iron frames with linen and heavy wool blankets; furniture is period rural pieces or purpose-made in wood and iron.
• Bathrooms are carved into the rock, several with deep stone or freestanding tubs and showers set into former water cisterns. They are theatrical. They are also windowless.
• Wi-Fi exists but stone is stone. Do not plan a working day here.
• Interior temperature is naturally stable, roughly in the mid-to-high teens Celsius year-round, with heating in winter. Humidity is the honest issue, not cold.

Every cave is a different shape, so no two rooms are equivalent. Some have a small opening onto the terrace and a slice of ravine view; others are essentially interior chambers, which is what a 900-year-old dwelling carved into a cliff actually looks like from inside.

Indicative rates

Rates move a lot by season and by how far ahead you book. Treat these as ranges to sanity-check against the hotel's own site rather than quotes:

Room type	Typical size	Low season (Nov–Feb, excl. holidays)	High season (Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct)
Cave double, no view	Compact	€220–€300	€320–€400
Cave double with terrace access / partial view	Mid	€280–€350	€380–€460
Junior suite	Larger cave, seating area	€350–€450	€480–€600
Suite	Multiple chambers	€450–€600	€600–€800+

Add Matera's tourist tax (a small per-person, per-night charge, typically €1.50–€3 depending on hotel category), and note that breakfast in the church is included. Dinner and aperitivo service in the church space is offered but is not a full restaurant operating every night of the year — confirm availability and price when you book, especially in deep winter and on Sundays and Mondays.

Yvon Fruneau, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo · Wikimedia Commons

The church

The hotel's common room is a rupestrian church, one of the rock-cut chapels that riddle the Sassi and the Murgia plateau opposite. Breakfast is laid out there every morning on long tables: local cheeses, cured meats, fig and citrus preserves, cakes, bread from Matera's DOP-protected wheat, which is genuinely one of Italy's great breads. Candles in the niches, vaulted rock overhead, no music. This, more than any individual room, is what people remember.

It is also the single best argument for a winter stay. In January the Sassi are quiet, room rates drop, and the candlelight and stone read as atmospheric rather than dim. In July and August the caves are cool while the streets outside hit 35°C+, which is a different but equally real advantage.

The last 200 metres

No taxi drops you at the door. Reception is at the top; the rooms are down flights of uneven stone steps cut into the slope, with no lift and nothing resembling a level corridor. Staff help with bags, but if you travel with a large hard case, a stroller, a knee that objects to stairs, or a toddler who runs, this is a genuine planning problem, not a quirk.

Getting to Matera at all takes a step: it has no mainline Italian rail station. From Bari Karol Wojtyła airport it is about 65 km, an hour by car, or the airport shuttle bus in roughly 1h15. From Bari Centrale, the private Ferrovie Appulo Lucane line takes about 1h30 — but it does not run on Sundays, when replacement buses operate on a reduced timetable. Coming from Naples, count on about four hours by bus. Drivers: park in the new town and walk down; the Sassi are largely closed to traffic.

Luca Aless, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Who should book something else

Be honest with yourself about which of these you are.

If you want…	Book instead	Why
A bright room with real daylight	A palazzo hotel near Piazza Duomo or Palazzo Viceconte	Windows, terraces, rooftop views over the Sassi
A tub or bed looking at the ravine	A cave-plus-spa hotel in Sasso Caveoso, e.g. Aquatio	Cave shells with glazed openings and modern bathrooms
Air conditioning and dry air	Any newer hotel in the Civita or the new town	Caves are naturally humid; dehumidifiers only go so far
Step-free access, family space, parking at the door	The new town (Piazza della Visitazione area)	Flat streets, lifts, garages, 10-minute walk to the Sassi
A hot-spring soak indoors	Locanda di San Martino	Hypogean pools in restored cisterns

One more filter: Sextantio is a design and heritage experience with hotel service attached, not a five-star resort. There is no pool, no gym, limited room service, and the sparseness is the point. Travellers who book it expecting luxury-hotel amenities at €400 a night are the ones who leave disappointed — not because the hotel failed, but because they bought the wrong thing.

Booking mechanics

Eighteen rooms sell out months ahead for spring weekends, Easter, and the 2 July Festa della Bruna. Book directly if you care which cave you get, and ask two questions in writing: whether the room has any natural light, and how many steps lie between reception and the door. Both answers vary enormously between categories, and both are the difference between a great night and a long one.

A final calibration: one night is enough to have the experience, two is plenty. Many travellers split the stay — a night in the caves for the atmosphere, a night in a bright room with a terrace for the view back across the Sassi at dusk. That combination costs less than two nights in a suite and shows you both halves of Matera.