A memorial commemorates local boy Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmo di Valentina d’Antonguolla, who died 1926. He started his career in the Italian Navy but was thrown out as a weakling and a thief. Relatives clubbed together to send him to America. In the First World War, when men were scarce, he throve as a taxi-dancer (a professional dancing partner) in nightclubs, then the theatre, then Hollywood. He was Rudolf Valentino. The pink-and-grey marble slab still attracts floral tributes. The labels read ‘To the Great Lover’ – ‘Incomparable Rudi’ – ‘Rudi, Mon Amour’.

Castellaneta, important in Roman and Norman times, has a lovely 13thC cathedral, restructured in the Baroque style. All the houses, frail-looking as paper houses, are crumpled on the brink of a tremendous ravine Streets wind at alarming heights and stop short on the edge of the abyss. Hawks nest among the crags below, which are also honeycombed with rock chapels. Difficult to get down to them.