Baccanti

Baccanti is the Aceto-family-run dining room on Via Sant'Angelo — a tufa-cave complex on the eastern edge of the Sasso Caveoso, directly overlooking the picturesque cave-church canyon (the Murgia Materana plateau opposite the city, with its Byzantine-era cave churches) — and is one of the most photographed dining settings in Matera. The restaurant occupies a converted 13th-century tufa-cave complex with stone-vaulted ceilings, hand-carved larch beams, and seventy-two covers across three rooms.

The cuisine is modern Lucanian with deep regional sourcing through the Basilicata-Apulia border larder. Signatures include a hand-rolled orecchiette with Lucanian lamb ragu and Pecorino di Filiano; a slow-cooked Lucanian lamb shoulder with thyme and peperone crusco crumb; a wood-fired Apulian octopus with green olive and lemon confit; a Matera-bread tortino with sheep's-milk ricotta and fig jam; the famous 'tortino al cioccolato' — a Lucanian dark chocolate cake with peperoncino-infused gelato.

The wine list runs to 400 references with a serious Lucanian and Apulian spine — deep coverage of Aglianico del Vulture (the canonical Lucanian DOC), Negroamaro, Primitivo, Greco di Tufo — and a respectable Italian-national section. Glass pours start at €5 and the by-the-glass programme runs a generous twelve-glass Lucanian-Apulian flight.

The dining room and outdoor terrace together hold seventy-two covers — forty-eight in the indoor cave dining room, twenty-four on the cliff-side outdoor terrace overlooking the Murgia Materana cave-church canyon directly. The summer terrace is the most photographed view-driven dining setting in Matera. Service is family-run — the Aceto siblings rotate the floor and the captains have worked the property for years.

Baccanti is the birthday-night room in Matera when the dinner needs to feel like an event. The cave-church-canyon-facing terrace is among the most photographed Matera dinner views, the cooking's Lucanian register is genuinely distinctive, and the room's volume on a Saturday night is celebratory. Book the cliff-side terrace four-top at sunset; order the four-course Lucanian tasting and a half-bottle of Aglianico del Vulture.