The regional capital, the highest in Italy. Foundations of the 11thC BC underpin a straggling collection of red- roofed tower blocks, and the most ancient sites, in the Via Pretoria area, disappeared in the dreadful earthquake of 1980, the latest of many. Some historic churches are being restored. For strangers the charm of Potenza, not immediately apparent, is its inhabi tants’ conservatism, the result of cen turies of isolation. There was no road to Naples until 1872 and no railway until 1880.

The May festival, called Maggio Potentino, with its cavalcades and gangs of little knights with wooden swords and little Turks in table-cloths, is a characteristic throwback across centuries of some splendour and much misery.