The church of San Giovanni Battista represents one of the most beautiful and best preserved examples of the Apulian Romanesque style in Matera.
The original structure dates back to years immediately before the thirteenth century and was completed in 1233, in this period the church was known as Santa Maria la Nova and was a place of welcome for the Augustinian penitents of Accon. When the nuns moved, around the end of the fifteenth century, the church was abandoned and remained unused until 1695 when Monsignor del Ryos sanctioned its reopening for worship, giving it the name by which we know it today.
It is accessed through what was originally the side facade, the main one was incorporated in 1610 in the construction of the adjacent building that was to serve as a hospital. The finely decorated portal, a rose window adorned with refined ornaments and a statue of St. John the Baptist made of polychrome stone stand out. To the right of the portal the façade corresponding to the apse has a structure very close to the original one.
The element that most characterizes this church is the typically medieval interior architecture, you can admire it thanks to the initiative of the abbot Marcello Morelli who between 1920 and 1930 decided to eliminate the eighteenth-century covering.
The church is Latin cross-shaped and consists of 3 naves divided by four-lobed pillars; on them rest half columns and capitals that have very elaborate and extremely varied decorations. From the pillars develop large arches that form cross vaults.
