The Cammino Materano is a fan of seven walking routes that all converge on Matera, and most of it lies in Puglia: you can set off from Bari, Brindisi, Manduria or Trani. Today, though, only two ways are complete, the Via Peuceta from Bari and the Via Ellenica from Alberobello, while the Sveva and the Dauna are still closed. We measured the track of the Via Peuceta: 167 kilometres and 2,652 metres of ascent in seven stages.
Seven ways to a single city
The Cammino Materano was born from a simple idea: Matera, just across the border in Basilicata, is the destination, and you can reach it from different directions, each telling the story of a different part of Puglia. It is modelled on the cultural routes of the Council of Europe, it has a pilgrim passport with stamps at each stage, and every way takes its name from a people or a dynasty: the Peucetians, the Greeks, the Swabians, the Daunians.
Which ways can be walked today, and which cannot
This is what decides a trip, and it changes over the years. The status below is the one declared by the association in August 2026.
- Via Peuceta, from Bari to Matera: 7 stages, 168 km declared. Open and complete. It starts from the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari and goes through Bitetto, Cassano delle Murge, Santeramo, Altamura and Gravina in Puglia.
- Via Ellenica, from Alberobello to Matera: 8 stages, 170 km. Open, declared complete with waymarks and places to stay. It crosses the Land of the Gravine, the ravines of the Taranto hinterland, through Martina Franca, Crispiano, Massafra, Mottola, Castellaneta, Palagianello, Laterza and Ginosa.
- Ellenica variant, from Brindisi to Alberobello: 6 stages. Open, but walk it with a GPS track: the association says the waymarking is patchy in several sections. It goes through San Vito dei Normanni, Carovigno, Ostuni, Cisternino and Locorotondo.
- Via Jonica, between Manduria and Taranto: under construction. The first section is waymarked and the tracks exist; the network of places to stay is being built.
- Via Sveva, from Trani towards Matera through Barletta, Andria, Castel del Monte and Minervino: closed. The feasibility studies are finished, the waymarks and accommodation network are not.
- Via Dauna, from Termoli to Matera through the Monti Dauni: closed, in the same condition.
- Via Lucana, from Albano di Lucania to Matera: entirely in Basilicata.
The Via Peuceta, measured
For the Via Peuceta there is a consolidated track of the whole route, and we measured it. The result: 167.0 kilometres against the 168 declared, a 0.6% difference that is excellent for figures like these, and above all 2,652 metres of ascent, the figure that appears nowhere else.
The profile of the Via Peuceta, 167 kilometres from Bari to Matera with the seven stages marked. No single climb stands out: you rise little by little from the sea to the Murgia plateau, and the two hardest stages are the last ones, when you have already been walking for five days.
- Bari to Bitetto: 16.8 km, +188 m. The farewell to the sea: you leave from the basilica and head inland, uphill.
- Bitetto to Cassano delle Murge: 25.1 km, +319 m.
- Cassano to Santeramo in Colle: 22.5 km, +408 m.
- Santeramo to Altamura: 23.0 km, +279 m.
- Altamura to Gravina in Puglia: 20.0 km, +223 m.
- Gravina to the Sanctuary of Picciano: 29.9 km, +608 m. The longest, and the one where you leave Puglia.
- Picciano to Matera: 29.7 km, +627 m.
Where this track comes from, and why we say so. The file we measured is a consolidated version put together by third parties, not the association’s official file: the names of its seven internal sections give it away, “GPSies Track”, “AllTrails Route”, “Via Peuceta – Santeramo Altamura 2022”. It matches the official distances very well, which is why we trust it for the elevation gain. But to walk the route, download the tracks from the official Cammino Materano website, which are the up-to-date ones.
Be careful with the distances you read online
On this route the figures need handling with care, and not through the fault of those who copy them: the official source contradicts itself in at least three places, and whoever copies it in good faith spreads the error.
- On the Ellenica variant the descriptive text speaks of “6 stages for a total of 118 km”, while the technical sheet next to it, on the same page, declares 137 km.
- On the Via Sveva the text says “a 210 km walk”, the sheet says 200.
- On the Via Jonica the sheet gives 215 km in five days, but the listed stages are eighteen to twenty kilometres each: five stages do not add up to two hundred and fifteen kilometres. The 215 km is probably the whole project, not the section that can be walked today.
And one detail confirms that reading. The stage pages of the Via Sveva still carry the website’s placeholder text, “This is the test description of the first stage…”, with “Distance: 10 km” repeated on two different stages. These are not wrong figures: they are placeholders never replaced, on a way that is in any case declared closed. It is the reason why, wherever we could, we measured the distances instead of copying them.
How much of the Cammino Materano is in Puglia
Almost all of it, except the finish. The Via Peuceta is Apulian for the first five and a half of its seven stages; the Via Ellenica is Apulian from Alberobello as far as Ginosa; the Ellenica variant lies entirely in Puglia, as do the Via Jonica and the useful part of the Via Sveva. Only the Via Lucana lies wholly in Basilicata. Matera, the goal of them all, is a few kilometres from the border.
The Cammino Materano is one of three walking route systems in Puglia, with the Via Francigena del Sud and the Cammino del Salento: all three, with what is open today, are compared on our page Puglia on foot.
The other walking and cycling routes of the region are collected in our Itineraries section.
