This is Italy’s best-kept secret for an off-season city break

Matera, in the southern Basilicata region, dazzles out of season. And this new cave hotel is an unforgettable stay from which to enjoy it

It could be that it’s close to midnight. Or that it’s November and the summer crowds are long gone. Maybe there’s a citywide party we weren’t invited to. Whatever the reason, my friend and I have Matera’s Piazza Duomo — the ancient cathedral square, perched high above the James Bond-famous town — almost entirely to ourselves. It is so quiet that we find ourselves speaking in whispers about the astonishing view below. Just over an hour ago we were in Bari airport and now we are in Italy’s city of stone, gawping at its maze of illuminated limestone buildings set into the side of a ravine. A streetlamp flickers somewhere in the distance, a motorbike engine revs from afar, but otherwise the place is still. We sit and stare for a while, murmuring something insufficient about how pretty it is, before setting off down the steep cobblestone steps back towards our hotel.

I’m here to see the new Vetera Matera, a five-star Relais & Châteaux hotel that opened earlier this year in one of the southern Italian city’s two sassi (stone) districts. It’s one of the city’s most talked-about recent openings, largely because of its scale: by Matera standards the 23-room spa hotel is a big one, and it’s taken eight years to come to fruition. An eclectic collection of historic buildings — among them millennia-old caves, cloisters and noble houses — have been meticulously restored and integrated into a sleek but discreet luxury hotel. It’s so well hidden, we nearly miss it.

Most of the hotel is around a street-level courtyard overhung by strings of lights. A sunset-facing rooftop bar is due to open in the coming weeks, but — the sassi being a Unesco site — it must meet strict planning laws first. These dictate everything from the type of stone used to the colours permitted for external doors. These regulations mean that much of the stone interior is original.

In the Elysium spa, a subterranean web of stone rooms housing a hydropool, hammam, sauna and cold plunge pool, the walls (fittingly) resemble a pumice stone. The treatment room where I have a 50-minute “borgo emotional massage” (£88) is a 2,500-year-old cave that once housed animals — there’s even an old stone feeding trough.

Many of the rooms and suites are split over multiple levels in what used to be 16th-century noble residences. They come with marble bathrooms, stone balconies overlooking the sassi, four-posters and church-like domed ceilings. But the pick of the bunch are the five hypogeum, or cave rooms, the priciest of which have their own plunge pools. I’ve never slept anywhere quite like ours, a spacious grotto carved into lunar rock, with an extremely comfy king-sized bed, grey-blue sofa and standing lamps (there’s very little natural light in here — there are no windows, just a glass door — so we need them).

I’m so distracted by the mysterious holes that pockmark the walls of the cave — some big enough to climb into — that it takes me a while to notice there’s an old cistern in the corner of the room, covered by a grate. The neolithic troglodyte vibe only extends so far, though. Our cave has super-fast wi-fi, soft lighting hidden cleverly in the stone, air con and a lovely little stone bathroom with a power shower and almond-scented toiletries.

Matera reveals itself properly the following morning, its rock architecture shining gold in the November sun. It’s mild enough to eat breakfast outside in the courtyard, where the only other guests are a young German couple and an impeccably dressed Italian family. We sip double espressos, fill up on local cheese and homemade lemon cake from the buffet, and then we’re off.

Getting to grips with the city

We take a city tour with the local guide Silvio Scocuzza (£176 for a two-hour tour for two people, arranged through the hotel). It’s so warm that I’m in sunglasses and short sleeves as we snake up, down and around the city’s steep backstreets. We pass through the Piazza Duomo again, even prettier in daylight, and ogle its 13th-century cathedral, a stuccoed Romanesque beauty and the highest point of Matera. It’s Sunday and the church bells are ringing in mass, so we can’t tour its heavy baroque interior — a shame, as Scocuzza tells us it’s gorgeous (entry £3).

Matera is one of the oldest continually inhabited places on Earth, and every stone street is catnip for history buffs like me. In the lower part of the city, we walk past rows of caves that housed families as long as 9,000 years ago. Plenty of these are now bars, art galleries and boutique hotels, but many remain empty and dilapidated, dormant since their 15,000 residents were cleared out and rehomed in the 1950s. The prime minister at the time declared Matera the “shame of Italy” because of how squalid and overcrowded the sassi were — how things have changed.

Scocuzza takes us to one cave dwelling, Casa Cisterna, that’s been preserved to show how its original residents would have lived, side by side with their livestock (entry £2; casacisterna.it). Elsewhere on our walk, he shows us the ancient cistern system originally used to collect rainwater, and some of the atmospheric rock churches dotted around the city. We pause to admire the Gravina di Matera, a spectacular green canyon just outside the old town, before refuelling with gelato at the 85-year-old Pasticceria Caffè Schiuma (instagram.com/caffeschiuma).

The city’s reincarnation as a tourist destination is a recent one. Yet it still feels remarkably unscathed by mass tourism at this time of the year. We don’t encounter another Brit during our stay and the only tour groups we pass are full of Italians. “Even for Italians, it’s such a unique place,” Scocuzza says. “The tourist season is changing — it’s very hot in the summer, so people are starting to come later in the year,” he adds.

The best places to eat in Matera

Matera’s relative absence of crowds means its best restaurants are reasonably priced and there’s never a queue for a table. I ask Scocuzza where serves the best pasta but he can’t choose. “I’ve never eaten badly here.” I wonder if he just doesn’t want to share his secret osteria with Times readers. Can you blame him?

And he’s not wrong — we do eat consistently well. At Conzato, a trendy alfresco spot a minute’s walk from the hotel, we enjoy peperoni cruschi (crunchy red peppers, a regional dish), bruschetta topped with stracciatella and truffle, and bread salad, a local delicacy (mains from £10; conzatomatera.it). At Oi Mari, an upmarket restaurant with an encyclopaedic wine menu, we share plates of lemony, button-shaped pasta and Lucanian lamb, followed by a seriously good tiramisu (mains from £16; oimari.it).

At La Nicchia nel Sasso, a low-key osteria built into the rock with a handful of tables, we have the best meal of our trip — a five-course tasting menu featuring delicate sturgeon and a delicious seafood pasta (tasting menus from £53; lanicchianelsasso.it). I’m not the only fan of the restaurant: as we’re getting up to leave, we hear two American women, the only other diners, ask to speak to the chef. “We’ve been travelling round Italy for two and a half weeks and this is the best meal we’ve had,” one says.

Food back at the hotel’s Artema restaurant, overseen by the Neapolitan head chef Eduardo Estatico, is excellent too. Estatico’s five-course tasting menu, “Travelling with Eduardo”, is designed to transport you from Naples to Matera, and dishes on our visit included a smoky risotto made with local red peppers and a fabulous lemon soufflé dessert that is nearly as big as my handbag (tasting menu £97). Just as standout is the setting: dinner is served in a white-walled cave so archaic that you can still make out the marks of the chisel and hammer from when it was excavated.

There’s enough to do, see and eat in Matera to keep you entertained for a week. I have a fascinating snoop around the city’s impressive collection of noble residences and palaces with the local guide Dora Cappiello, who grew up in the city (£264 for a two-and-a-half-hour tour for two people). A highlight is Palazzo Bernardini, an exquisite 15th-century palace with elaborate ceiling frescoes, grand Murano chandeliers and a garden with unmatched sassi views (palazzobernardinimatera.it).

A day trip to Altamura

As lovely as Matera is, there’s plenty to see beyond its stone walls, and if you have time I’d recommend spending a day in Altamura, a 20-minute drive north. My guide here is the infectiously warm Sandra Suriano, who lives in the medieval town and seems to know everyone we pass. “Everyone’s friends here — even strangers invite each other out for focaccia,” she says, as we walk through the historic Jewish quarter and past a street alarmingly named Claustro Inferno — hell cloister (“something bad happened here, but we don’t know what,” Suriano explains).

This is the sort of town where everyone shuts up shop and goes back home for pasta and a nap come lunchtime. Fortunately for us, we also have lunch plans — a cooking class in the home of Sandra, a local chef, who teaches us to make fresh pasta and Puglian scarcelle biscuits (instagram.com/zia_sandra). Otis Redding plays in the background as we knead and roll dough in Sandra’s kitchen. She cooks the pasta and we eat it on her balcony, accompanied by Puglian red wine (£280 for a half-day tour and cooking class for two people).

Altamura is known for its sourdough-style bread, pane di Altamura — Panificio Di Gesu, a historic family bakery close to the town centre, is the place to get it — but I’m equally intrigued by another local speciality, tette delle monache. Translation: nun’s tit. It’s quite the moniker for the Chantilly cream-filled, breast-shaped pastry unique to the region. I buy my tette from Caffè Ronchi Striccoli, a bakery next to the town’s 13th-century cathedral, and it is divine.

By the time we return to Matera it’s dark and rainy, the only sign of the season in an otherwise balmy long weekend. Anywhere else, the rain would spoil the view. But here it simply adds to the beauty of the sassi, which gleam in the dampness. Claudia Rowan was a guest of Vetera Matera, which has B&B doubles from £223 (veteramatera.com). The hotel is closed January 8 to March 26. Fly to Bari

Italy’s six best wintry cities

Siracusa is still warm, the crowds have left Bologna — now is the time to enjoy these crowd-free beauties, writes Aaliyah Ahmed

In winter Italy’s cities are returned to their locals, and it’s the ideal time for slow wandering and second helpings of everything. From still-warm Siracusa to charming Trento, these seven escapes show how a little chill in the air can make Italy feel warmer than ever.

1. Bologna, Emilia-Romagna

Bologna’s red-brick arcades, lined with trattorias serving tagliatelle al ragu and lambrusco, are extra tempting at this time of year. With students in class and tourists gone you can slip easily between the Pinacoteca’s Renaissance halls and the medieval Asinelli Tower’s misty view. At lunch tuck into mortadella and crescentine without a queue in sight. Stay at the Grand Hotel Majestic, a frescoed palazzo near Piazza Maggiore that is big on marble corridors and crisp linens. Details B&B doubles from £413 (grandhotelmajestic.duetorrihotels.com). Fly to Bologna

2. Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna

If winter is a time for introspection, Ravenna is the perfect setting. The Byzantine mosaics — found inside the Basilica of San Vitale and the Galla Placidia Mausoleum — shimmer in low light, more vivid now than in the heat of summer. It’s quiet enough to hear your footsteps echo between the basilicas and cafés serving thick hot chocolate. Spend the night at Palazzo Bezzi Hotel, a calm retreat with a small spa and rooftop terrace for misty morning views across terracotta rooftops. Details B&B doubles from £104 (palazzobezzi.it). Fly to Bologna

3. Siracuse, Sicily

When we’re shivering in the UK, Siracusans are waking to 17C sunshine and glimmering sea light. On Ortigia island winter days stretch long and golden — perfect for tracing Greek columns, stopping at the seafood market or watching the waves beneath the Temple of Apollo. At Lume Boutique Hotel rooms are light and bright with balconies that overlook the water. Details B&B doubles from £344 (lume-ortigia.com). Fly to Catania

4. Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige

Tucked beneath the Dolomites, Trento feels like a secret Renaissance city surrounded by snow. Its pastel façades glow against crisp mountain skies, while locals sip mulled wine beneath the castle walls. Explore Buonconsiglio Castle for frescoes of knights and courtiers, and wander through markets strung with fairy lights. Stay at Hotel America, a comfortable base that blends Alpine warmth with city-centre convenience. Details Room-only doubles from £83 (hotelamerica.it). Fly to Verona or Bolzano

5. Lecce, Puglia

Lecce’s baroque façades glow at this time of year, their intricate curls and cherubs thrown into relief against pale blue skies. Without the summer glare the “Florence of the south” slows to an elegant stroll — through Piazza del Duomo, past the Basilica di Santa Croce, into quiet courtyards. Pollicastro Boutique Hotel, a converted 16th-century palazzo, has 12 charming rooms and a central location that makes it an excellent base. Details B&B doubles from £138 (pollicastroboutiquehotel.com). Fly to Brindisi

6. Alghero, Sardinia

This Catalan-flavoured port town is still mild and bright, perfect for coastal walks along the Lungomare or boat trips to Neptune’s Grotto, a sea cave etched with stalactites. The chicest stay is Villa Las Tronas Hotel & Spa, a historic villa perched over the water, once a royal retreat with a sea-view spa pool and elegant salons. Details B&B doubles from £162 (hotelvillalastronas.it). Fly to Alghero