The town’s sorrowful drama of oppression and hopeless rebellion was played out on a stage of crag and ravine, chopped, scarred and wind-sculpted. A ravine actually splits the town in two, with a bridge connecting old part with new. In a few visitable grottoes there are traces of frescos. The best rock-chapel is San Leonardo but the most interesting site is the sanctuary of the Madonna della Scala – the scala being an ornamented stairway of 125 steps down into the ravine. From the sanctuary you tunnel into the Magician’s Pharmacy, a complex of linked cells lined with pigeon-holes where, it is thought, Graeco-Syrian monks experimented with medicinal herbs.