The major tourist attraction that was once ‘the shame of Italy’

When Carlo Levi penned his acclaimed Italian novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli, he could surely never have conceived that the impoverished town once labelled as “the shame of Italy” would one day become a subject of pride for Italians. Indeed, should Christ ever visit this near biblical part of Italy he would be well-advised to bypass Eboli and venture straight to Matera where, budget-allowing, he may care to reserve digs in the unique and luxurious cave hotels for which it has become renowned. The view to Matera from one of the many caves in the area.

Credit: iStock I’ve come here, the geographic instep of the country’s famed boot, as one of the guests of an Albatross Tours’ 17-day Deep South fully escorted journey from Rome to Palermo, Sicily’s largest city, with two nights reserved at one of the world’s most extraordinary lodgings. The 1945 novel by the polymath Levi, who was also variously a painter, writer, activist, politician and doctor, describes his pre-war political exile to the remote Matera region of the Apennine Mountains in the southern Italian province of Basilicata, which borders the better-known Puglia. Levi was banished to this Italian back-of-beyond by the ruling Mussolini-led fascist regime, to spend time among the region’s peasantry around Eboli, now two hours’ drive west from the hilltop Matera.

Following World War II, it became regarded as the most pitiful and squalid place in all of Italy. The peasantry, to whom Levi tended as a doctor, .