One Night in a Natural Cave Hotel in the Ancient Sassi of Matera, Italy

Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.

My mother had two requests for her birthday trip to Italy. The first was to visit our long-lost relatives in Puglia. The second was to spend the night in a fancy hotel. That’s what brought us to Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita, an 18-room albergo diffuso ("scattered hotel") built into centuries-old caves in the mountainside city of Matera in southern Italy.

Evidence of human settlements in Matera’s natural caves, known as the Sassi, trace back to the Paleolithic era. Though it wasn’t all that long ago that the prehistoric caverns served as homes for many thousands of the city’s residents, with rock-hewn churches and cemeteries mixed in among the calcarenite houses. In 1945, Italian activist Carlo Levi wrote about the appalling, deprived living conditions in the overcrowded Sassi, earning Matera’s cave complexes the nickname la vergogna nazionale ("the shame of the nation")—and its citizens an eviction notice. In 1950, Italy’s prime minister instituted an ill-conceived plan to relocate the Sassi’s entire population to new housing developments outside the city, and the abandoned cave networks went into disrepair. But after a slew of restoration and preservation efforts in the 1980s, and a 1993 UNESCO World Heritage Site designation, the first cave hotels started to open in Matera, with renovation oversight by conservation experts. In the decades since, the same caves that were once the locus of Italian shame have played a major role in the city’s tourism boom and economic prosperity.

Now, I’ll admit to a degree of skepticism about the comfort of sleeping inside a rocky grotto, and I was a little dubious about whether the hotel stay would lean toward kitsch, or feel uncouth (even with the architectural direction from Pritzker Prize winner David Chipperfield and the aforementioned preservation oversight). All the more reason to find out.

Wednesday

8 a.m.: My family and I are on the road to Matera after grabbing a cappuccino and croissant at a cafe called Almond. We’ve been in Italy for three days already and are anxious for a change of scenery from the lush Puglian countryside to the rocky Basilicata region. We are exhausted. Miles of windmills dot the landscape to our right. We try to identify where the line of them ends, but every time we think we’ve seen the last, another spinning needle reveals itself in the distance. We argue about the Italian word for cow. I nod in and out of sleep.

10:30 a.m.: We arrive in what we will soon understand to be "new" Matera—the part of the city erected after the Italian government’s 1950 mandate to evacuate the Sassi. There is a narrow green space between two main roads where cyclists skirt traffic and old men sit on benches. This is where the parking garage that Sextantio has directed us to leave our car and wait for the pickup shuttle is located. I press my forehead against the window to try and catch a glimpse of the Matera I’ve seen in pictures, a honeycomb of sand-colored rock structures clustered in a jagged heap, but wherever it is, it’s blocked by a series of plaster facades.

We pack into the pickup van with a couple who has just flown in from Florida. I ask how they decided on Sextantio; the woman replies that they "wanted to do the cave thing." I get my first peek at the old city as we zigzag through streets that raise caution for a vehicle of our size. After about 10 minutes, we arrive.

11 a.m.: A robot with two conveyor belts for legs and a crate for luggage carries our bags up several stone steps to the reception area. (Historic sites and 21st-century luxuries can coexist.) The hotel has no "lobby" per se, only a large outdoor space with rustic furniture—Sextantio’s own piazza. When I arrive, a woman sips a cappuccino at a table with a lone bench that looks out onto Alta Murgia National Park opposite the hotel. I step inside a chamber on the piazza marked "Reception."

My first impression from inside one of Matera’s cave dwellings, aside from the 30-second period of blindness I experience while my eyes adjust to the lack of sun, is how lovely it smells in the calcarenite room. I look around to find the source and spot wooden diffusers in a wall divot. Scentless candles light up many of the cave’s natural nooks. Classical music echoes off the high ceilings. I walk past another guest and she recommends I take the hotel’s weaving class. I lament that I will not have the time.

11:30 a.m: My family and I decide to explore the city and find lunch while we wait for our rooms to be prepared. As we trundle up the stairs toward a level street, we pass a group of German tourists who have stopped at a nearby lookout. I hear the guide refer to Sextantio by name and take note that our hotel merits mention. Considering the 18 guest rooms are individual caves carved into a singular rock face, it is not entirely clear where the hotel grounds begin and end. A small public walkway veins through the cluster of accommodations, while small metal gates distinguish each as its own property. (Later, while donning a robe and slippers, I’ll wave to a pair of tourists peering over said gate, perhaps wondering if my room is a gift shop.)