Matera Sassi Storica Casa Grotta - di vico Solitario: Typically Furnished Cave Dwelling To see what a real peasant dwelling was like before the “Sassi” of Matera were abandoned, visit a typical cave dwelling with furniture and tools of the time in the “Sasso Caveoso”. The description of the Cave Dwelling in English language is available inside. Open all year round.

A restored XVI century building with court located in via San Giovanni Vecchio 60 (Sasso Barisano) is the home of the 500 m2 large Museo Laboratorio della Civiltà Contadina (Museum-Workshop of the Peasant Culture). The exhibition rooms are dedicated to the ancient trades related to the work in the fields but also to all the other handicraft activities carried on in the ancient quarters of Matera: sieve-maker, tanner, shepherd, basket-maker, cavamonti, shoe-shiner, barber, cabinet-maker, mastro d'ascia, blacksmith, tailor, conciapiatti, potter, knife-grinder, saddler, coppersmith, cobbler, peasant, scalpellino. Also, various every-day tools are exposed: farm tools, equipment for storage and processing of wheat, weaving equipment. Other rooms are dedicated to daily-life places - such as the public wine cellar and the typical house - and themes related to the South-Italy history such as brigandage, childhood condition and water-harvesting. The Museo-Laboratorio aims to be a dynamic structure among the tourism products of Matera and a reference for the development of the culture of the past through exhibition and educational activities.

The MUSMA, internationally recognized for its unique cave exhibition spaces, is the most important museum entirely dedicated to sculpture in Italy. MUSMA occupies the spaces of the 17th Century Palazzo Pomarici and was inaugurated on October 14th, 2006. In ancient caves carved-out of limestone over time, there are works of art which tell the story of Italian and international sculpture from the late 1800s to today and seem to have found their “natural home”. The fullness and emptiness of sculpture appear extraordinarily complementary to the positive and negative spaces of the Sassi architecture. From the underground rooms, we pass into the noble palace, onto the first floor where the works are arranged in chronological order and are framed by elegant vaults and cornices.