Matera is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. The sassi cave dwellings carved into the ravine have housed people for at least nine millennia.
Today a handful of those caves have been converted into hotels where you sleep inside walls that were first occupied in the Stone Age. You wake to church bells echoing off tufa rock, breakfast in a vaulted cave dining room, and walk out into a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Book the Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita for the most authentic conversion, or Palazzo Gattini for polished views over the ravine.