Matera Sassi tickets and prices
The Sassi streets are free. Rock churches cost €4.50 each or €10 for three, Casa Grotta €8, plus MUSMA, the cistern, the underground sites and Murgia trails.
You do not need a ticket to see the Sassi di Matera. The lanes, stairways and viewpoints of Sasso Caveoso, Sasso Barisano and the Civita are public streets, and you can walk them all day for nothing. You pay to go inside: €4.50 for one rock church or €10 for three, €8 for the Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario, €4 for the Cathedral route, €10 for MUSMA, about €3 for the Palombaro Lungo cistern and €8 for the MateraSum underground site. Across the gorge, the Murgia park now charges for its trails and the Belvedere di Murgia Timone.
Venue prices on this page are in euros, taken from each venue’s own price page in October 2026. Tours and tickets sold on GetYourGuide are priced in US dollars. The cheapest way underground is the Matera: Underground Tour of the Sassi with Audio Guide, $7 for a self-paced visit to the San Giorgio al Paradiso complex, rated 4.8 from 34 GetYourGuide reviews.
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What you can see for free
The Comune di Matera recommends exploring the Sassi on foot, and the streets that climb to the Civita can only be walked. Nobody checks a ticket on the way in. Most of the land in the historic area belongs to the state and is leased to the city, which runs it as an open district with paid sites scattered through it. On your trip that means a self-guided morning on the stairs costs nothing, and the money only starts when you step through a door.
The best free views are on the town side of the Gravina gorge. The Belvedere Luigi Guerricchio, a small terrace behind three round arches on the east side of Piazza Vittorio Veneto, gives you a view across Sasso Barisano to the Cathedral. Piazzetta Pascoli, beside Palazzo Lanfranchi, is the other classic terrace. The Gravina viewpoints along the edge of the Sassi stay free as well.
A few interiors are free too. The Chiesa di Mater Domini, on the same circuit as the ticketed rock churches, charges nothing. At the Oltre l’Arte sites (the cooperative that runs the Diocese’s rock churches, the Cathedral route and several cave houses), children up to 10 enter free with a parent. The Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario lets in children 10 and under at no charge.
What is not free: the Belvedere di Murgia Timone, the famous view back at the Sassi from across the ravine. The park authority sells access tickets for it and for Sentiero 406, the trail that crosses the suspension bridge, so older web pages that call it free outdoor scenery are out of date.
What each ticket costs
The table lists the paid sites in and around the Sassi with their full adult price. Reduced prices exist at almost every venue for children, students, over-65s or members of FAI and similar groups, so check the venue’s page if one applies to you.
| Site | Full price | Booking and notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rock churches: Santa Maria de Idris with San Giovanni in Monterrone, Santa Lucia alle Malve, San Pietro Barisano | €4.50 one, €8 two, €10 all three | Book a date and time; tickets are non-refundable |
| Cathedral and MATA Diocesan Museum route | €4 | Closed to tourist visits 10:00-12:30 on Sundays and solemnities |
| Oltre l’Arte ticket for 8 sites | €25 (reduced €16) | Three rock churches, Vicinato a Pozzo, Antica Casa Grotta, MATA, Purgatorio exhibition, Museo del Pane |
| Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario | €8 from 4 April 2026 (reduced €5) | Four caves: the house, the Neviera, a natural cave and the Sant’Agostino rock church; online booking available |
| Antica Casa Grotta, Via Fiorentini | €2 | Oltre l’Arte site |
| Vicinato a Pozzo | €8 | Oltre l’Arte site |
| Casa Noha (FAI) | €7 | Immersive video visit of 30-40 minutes; closed on Wednesdays |
| MUSMA, contemporary sculpture museum | €10 | Open daily, closing earlier in winter |
| Palombaro Lungo cistern | €3 (2021 listing) | Pay at the box office, no reservations, about 15 minutes |
| MateraSum underground site | €8 with audio guide | About 15 minutes plus a short video; book online |
| San Giorgio al Paradiso underground complex | $7 on GetYourGuide | Self-paced, 15-20 minutes |
| Cripta del Peccato Originale | About €8 (2024 listing) | Booking mandatory; outside Matera, about 15 minutes by car |
| Murgia Timone access | Roughly €7-10 by season | Book on visitparcomurgia.it |
| Sentiero 406 and the suspension bridge | Roughly €10-15 by season | Hiking shoes obligatory |
Two churches you will see on tour itineraries have no official ticket price: Madonna delle Virtù with San Nicola dei Greci, and Sant’Antonio Abate. Neither is on the Oltre l’Arte tariff, so pay at the door if they are open, or go with a tour that includes them. The Casa Grotta Narrante on Via Madonna delle Virtù does not publish its price either.
The older Casa Grotta prices you may find online (€2, €3 or €5) are out of date. The museum’s own page has listed €8 since 4 April 2026.
Which tours include which tickets
Most two-hour walking tours fold one cave house and one church into the price, and the guide’s group rate covers the door. Oltre l’Arte charges visitors who come with an authorized guide €2.50, €4 or €5 for one, two or three churches, which helps explain how operators fit entries into a ticket of $33 to $39. Here is what each listing says it includes.
| Tour | Price | Entries included |
|---|---|---|
| Sassi Tour with Cave House and Rupestrian Church | $33 | A cave house museum (Casa Grotta Narrante in the itinerary) and the Sant’Antonio Abate rock church |
| Tour of the Sassi with iconic rock-cut churches | $39 | Santa Maria de Idris, San Giovanni in Monterrone and the Museum of Peasant Civilization |
| Guided City Center Tour with Cave Churches and Houses | $39 | Santa Maria de Idris, San Giovanni in Monterrone and the Del Vicinato cave house |
| Guided Walking Tour with Cave House/Church | $34 | An entry ticket to a furnished cave house or a frescoed rock church (not named) |
| Sassi Walking Tour, Premium Guide | $34 | Santa Lucia alle Malve |
| Open Top Bus Tour with Casa Grotta | $22 | Casa Grotta Narrante |
| Murgia Timone sunset tour | $47 | Park tickets for the Belvedere and Murgia Timone, plus San Falcione and Madonna delle Tre Porte |
The most-reviewed of these is the Matera: Sassi Tour with Cave House and Rupestrian Church by Martulli Viaggi, 4.7 from 7,953 GetYourGuide reviews. If you want the Monterrone churches, the $39 Passi nei Sassi walk, the Tour of the Sassi with iconic rock-cut churches, includes both plus a museum. The cave houses these tours enter are not all the same venue, which our cave houses and rock churches guide sorts out.
Not every tour includes entries. The private Matera: Private Walking Tour lists cave-house and church tickets as excluded, so budget for them at the door. Bus day trips from Bari vary: the Alberobello combos exclude admission fees, while the From Bari: Excursion to Matera by Bus lists a Casa Grotta museum ticket among its inclusions. Our Bari day-trip page compares them.
Underground Matera: three different sites
Three underground visits are sold in Matera, and they are easy to confuse. They are separate places with separate tickets.
San Giorgio al Paradiso is on Via Sette Dolori in Sasso Barisano, a few steps from Piazza del Sedile. The $7 GetYourGuide ticket covers about 400 square meters on several levels: six rock-cut cisterns, a rock church, an olive-oil mill, a 17th-century wine cellar and a cave house at the end. You enter whenever it is open, with no time slot, and follow a free audio guide on your phone in ten languages. The loop takes 15-20 minutes and the ticket stays valid for 20 days. All of these details come from the operator’s own listing.
MateraSum, also called MateraSotterranea, sits at Recinto XX Settembre 7. Its own site describes 1,200 square meters underground, down to 12 meters deep, and sells an audio-guided visit for €8 that takes about 15 minutes plus a short video. GetYourGuide sells the MateraSotterranea Underground City entry ticket at $9, rated 4.7 from 17 reviews. In October and November 2026 the venue lists weekend and holiday walk-in slots and weekday visits by booking only, so check its site before you go.
The Palombaro Lungo is the big cistern under Piazza Vittorio Veneto, built in phases from the 16th century, 16 meters deep and 50 meters long, with a capacity of about 5 million liters. You walk over it on suspended walkways. The ticket is €3, paid at the box office with no reservations, and the visit takes about 15 minutes. Those figures come from a page last dated 2021, so treat the price and hours (10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00) as a guide. Animals are not allowed inside.
The Cripta del Peccato Originale, with frescoes dated to the 8th and 9th centuries, is sometimes sold alongside these, but it is a cave church in the countryside about 15 minutes’ drive from Matera. Booking is mandatory, and its ticket also gives reduced entry to MUSMA within seven days.
Passes: one circuit ticket and two different cards
The Oltre l’Arte ticket for eight sites costs €25 and covers all three rock churches, the Vicinato a Pozzo, the Antica Casa Grotta, the Cathedral’s MATA museum, the Purgatorio exhibition and the bread museum. It does not include the Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario or the Palombaro Lungo. If you only want the churches, the €10 three-church ticket is the cheaper buy.
Oltre l’Arte also sells the Matera Card, valid for seven days from your first entry. Its price was not shown on the card’s site in October 2026.
The Matera City Pass on GetYourGuide is a different, privately run product. It costs $29, lasts 24 hours from your first site and gives one entry per site. The listing names ten sites, including San Pietro Barisano, the Vicinato a Pozzo, the Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario, the MOOM olive-oil museum and a Salvador Dalí exhibition, though its own description also talks about choosing four. MOOM and the Racconti in Pietra museum need booking at least 24 hours ahead, and you collect a physical pass in town before your first visit. It has 5 reviews so far (4.4). Add up the door prices of the sites you would visit anyway before you buy it.
Park tickets on the Murgia
The Murgia Materana park across the gorge sells two access tickets through visitparcomurgia.it. The Murgia Timone ticket covers the belvedere area, the Jazzo Gattini visitor center, the trails there, the San Falcione rock church, a shuttle to the belvedere and toilets. The Sentiero 406 ticket adds the 6 km trail from Porta Pistola in the Sassi, across the suspension bridge of about 70 meters. The park’s own page shows two sets of figures for each, so expect roughly €7-10 for Murgia Timone and €10-15 for Sentiero 406, depending on season. On Sentiero 406, under-25s pay half and children under 6 with a parent enter free.
Sandals and flip-flops are refused on Sentiero 406, and hiking shoes are obligatory. If you would rather not organize the ticket and the transfer yourself, the $47 Murgia Timone Belvedere Sunset Guided Tour & Transfer includes park admission and two rock churches. Our sunset tour page covers the evening options.
Tourist tax and other costs to plan for
Matera collects a city tax per person per night through your accommodation. We could not find a confirmed 2026 rate, so ask your hotel, and expect it to be charged on top of many booking prices. Our where to stay page covers the areas.
Book the three Oltre l’Arte rock churches for a set date and time; their tickets cannot be refunded if your plans change. All Oltre l’Arte sites close on 25 December and on 2 July, the day of the Festa della Bruna, when the Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario opens only from 9:00 to 13:30. Casa Noha was closed from 5 to 22 October 2026 for renovation and reopens with a new immersive visit.
Before you buy
- Decide which interiors matter to you, then pick a tour that includes them or buy them yourself.
- Carry euros or a card for the door: tour prices are in dollars, venue prices in euros.
- Check MateraSum and the Crypt for your exact date, because both run on bookings.
To book the underground visit, use the date checker near the top of this page. For a guided walk with entries included, compare tours in our guide to choosing a Sassi tour, or see how to fit the paid sites into a day in Matera in one day.
Book Your Walk Through the Sassi
Two hours with a licensed guide, a cave house and a rock-cut church, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before the tour.
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