Why You Should Visit Matera With Kids, Matera, Italy

Have you ever wished for a magic carpet to whisk you back to the past? A time machine to transport you back to a time when there were no cars and people lived in caves? Visiting Matera with kids is no less a thrill than a ride on a magic carpet. Where else in the world can you sleep in a cave first occupied 9,000 years ago or wander around streets virtually unchanged for hundreds of years?

The hilltop city of Matera in Basilicata, Southern Italy, is one of the oldest cities in the world. It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site and European Capital of Culture for 2019 but it’s also a brilliant place to visit with kids who will fall in love with a city of higgledy-piggledy lanes and thousands of caves. It’s a city that looks like a film set for an historical blockbuster. A city so strange and unusual that every day there feels like an adventure.

Here are all the reasons why we loved Matera with kids and tips on the best things to see and do to make it even more exciting.

What could be more thrilling for kids than sleeping in a cave? Matera is famous for the ancient caves in its sassi, the oldest part of the city and many of them have been restored into boutique hotels and b&bs. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).