Twenty kilometres south of Matera and connected by rail, the hilltop town of MONTESCAGLIOSO was once a Greek settlement and is now the site of a magnificent ruined eleventh-century Benedictine abbey, the Abbazia di Sant’Angelo . There are good views from here over the Bradano Valley. On the same line, but more conveniently reached by bus (the train station is 10km below the town), is the lively medieval town of MIGLIÓNICO , with a finely preserved fifteenth-century bastion at one end, with views all around. It was here in 1481 that the congiura dei baroni was held, a meeting of rebellious barons who formed a league in opposition to Ferdinand II of Aragon, from which the castle assumed the study Castello del Malconsiglio . The SS7, which heads west from here, is the Roman Via Appia, and is a far preferable route to the SS407 (Basentana) that runs parallel. Buses only touch on it intermittently, so it’s best covered with your own transport. Tracing the ridge between the Bradano and Basento valleys, it takes in some magnificent country and a number of good stopoffs. TRICÁRICO is another old hilltop village, quite important in its time, with a Duomo originally constructed by Robert Guiscard. Further south, ALIANO is the village in which Carlo Levi set Christ Stopped at Eboli . Called Gagliano by Levi, it’s reachable by bus from Pisticci , on the Matera train line. Apart from the yellow “welcome” sign on the outskirts of the village and a general air of well-being, the place has not significantly changed since he was there. Nothing is missing: the church, the piazza where the Fascist mayor gave his regular addresses to the impassive peasants and which gives onto the steep drop of the fossa del bersagliere and a striking view over the Agri and the “endless sweep of clay, with the white dots of villages, stretching out as far as the invisible sea” that Levi knew so well. You can see the rather grand house where he stayed at the bottom of the village (“away from the gaze of the mayor and his acolytes”), near which is a museum (free) housing some individualized items of Levi’s and articles of folkloric interest; to visit, telephone 0835.568.074 or 0360.506548, or call at the Bar Centrale on the main street – where, incidentally, there is also a basic restaurant .