Corte San Pietro

About

Corte San Pietro is a micro district, a neighbourhood, with a courtyard onto which face rooms and suites carved out from the tufa stone, soft local sedimentary limestone. The rooms, former cave-dwellings, keep the same house number as in the past, when they were inhabited by large families. Remained uninhabited for over 50 years, they have been subject to a long and accurate process of preservation and restoration with discreet modern technological systems and have now become unusual and unique rooms and suites. Breakfast is being served in the courtyard in summertime. The historical structure has been laid bare, enhancing the masonry in tufa stone featured by niches and old-aged openings, and topped by large vaults. In the courtyard, the upper part of three cisterns helps understand the systems formerly used to collect the rain waters, subsequently connected to one another probably during the second world war. They now can be visited through highly suggestive inner passages. This is one of the main reasons why Matera is part of the Unesco world heritage list since 1993, rainwaters were then used by the inhabitants of the cave-dwellings. At Corte San Pietro, technology is invisibile, Wi-Fi is available everywhere, which allows our hosts to use it admiring the plants typical of the mediterranean vegetation such as salvia, rosemary or myrtle. Just a stone away from the hotel, the cave-church Madonna de Idris overlooks the Sasso Caveoso and the suggestive stream Gravina. Leaving the church, downstairs is the Piazza S. Pietro Caveoso with the beautiful baroque church dating back to the 14 C. Farther up, Via Purgatorio vecchio with the church where Saint John of Matera was born and where now it is possible to visit a huge cistern called Palombaro, used in the past to collect the rain waters coming from the hill where the castle Tramontano stands. Nearby, the district Malve, where graves dating back to the lombard period were found and mentioned in Carlo Levi's book as "the dead are above the living". Going from Via Buozzi up to the Civita Hill is the MUSMA, the most important italian museum exclusively dedicated to the contemporary scuplture, located in the 17 c. Palazzo Pomarici, the only italian museum in cave: a perfect symbiosis between the sculptures and some of the most characteristical places in the heart of the Sassi. A little farther up, the cathedral dating back to the 13 c., built in romanesque-apulian style on the highest point of the hill that divides the two Sassi. And a lot more to see...