In Matera, most of the venues are still unbuilt or unrenovated, and neither the rail line from Rome mor the new highway are finished. “Rome and Brussels secured €400m (£360m) to organise the year’s events, money that was supposed to pay for restoring buildings and repairing streets in a place famed for its stunning but dilapidated beauty and history of dire poverty. But … most of the money is still trapped in the labyrinth of Italian bureaucracy and has not yet been spent.”