Palazzo Viceconte

The worst accommodation experience 👎 Hot water comes from a boiler shared by the guests, and once it runs out, you have to wait an hour for it to heat up again. We raised this with the hotel, and they sent a rude technician. He turned on the tap and told us to wait six minutes. It wasn’t six minutes, it was sixty. He didn’t fix anything. He just appeared briefly and hurried off, as if we were the ones causing trouble. Visiting in winter would be really frustrating, since there’s no hot water for a proper shower.

We booked Palazzo Viceconte in Matera by mistake, and it turned out to be by far our best choice. Our family had a suite and a junior suite, but we were astonished to find three royal rooms. The staff were incredibly friendly and eager to help with anything. We had breakfast on the third-floor terrace, with a breathtaking view over the city. We highly recommend the hotel and hope to return.

We wish we could have stayed longer. The breakfast was fantastic, and our server Abdu was friendly and professional. The rooms were full of beautiful artwork, and the restoration showed wonderful craftsmanship. The building is a palace from the late 1500s. We’ve stayed in hotels all over the world, and this is the nicest one we’ve ever experienced.

The hotel itself was nice, but a very unfortunate incident made the stay deeply unsettling. We were instructed to drive to the hotel and park in its courtyard, but the directions were sketchy and we got lost. About a year later, a fine arrived for driving in a restricted zone. I explained to the Italian law firm trying to collect it that the hotel had told us to drive through the zone and had given the Matera police our tag number. I copied the hotel on that correspondence, but got negative responses and now owe more than double the original amount. A US collection agency is pursuing payment. The hotel staff are at fault, and I found it unhelpful and discourteous that the hotel didn’t assist, despite being copied on all my messages with the police and their lawyer. Don’t go to Hotel Palazzo Viceconte. They don’t deserve to be in a beautiful city like Matera.