Aquatio Cave Luxury Hotel is built into the tuff rock of the Sasso Caveoso — the hotel's reception and public spaces are in the original cave volumes, which have been fitted with a minimal white interior language that works precisely because it refuses to compete with the geology. The white curved reception desk, the smooth surfaces, and the green apples in a wooden bowl against the ancient limestone create an argument about material contrast that is more considered than it might initially appear. The rooms maintain the same logic: contemporary white fittings inside the carved stone shells. The terrace pool looks directly across the Gravina ravine to the rupestrian churches on the opposite face. This is one of the more architecturally resolved cave hotel conversions in Matera — it understands the building.
Sasso Caveoso, Matera, Italy