Località Melfi

Melfi rises on a hill overlooking the Ofanto valley, not far from Mount Vulture.

The old town is enclosed in the original Norman walls rebuilt in the Aragonese era. The polygonal castle, with eight towers and defensive moat, is the result of interventions that have occurred over the centuries. The oldest nucleus consists of the central building made up of four corner towers that enclose a square perimeter, wanted by the Norman knights at the beginning of the twelfth century. Five Papal Councils were held there and in 1089 the first crusade to the Holy Land was banned. In the following century the castle was enlarged, at the behest of Frederick II, and became a treasure chest of the kingdom, prison and an important center of studies, in which Pier delle Vigne and Riccardo da Capua redassero in 1231 the "Constitutitiones Augustales", the oldest text of written laws of the Middle Ages, a work of primary importance for the history of law.

Other enlargements took place with the Angevins, the Caracciolos of Naples and the Dorians who held the castle from 1531 to 1952, the year in which it was donated to the Italian State for the establishment of the Melfese National Archaeological Museum named after Massimo Pallottino, a well-known Italian archaeologist. On the first floor of the castle are exhibited Daunian ceramics with geometric decoration, bronze armour of warrior leaders buried with the parade cart and precious ornaments in amber and gold.
In the clock tower there is the marble Sarcophagus found in Rapolla dating back to the second century A.D. On the lid there is a deceased noblewoman, while on the slabs of the sarcophagus of the Roman heroes, they are enclosed in niches with tortile columns and capitals, to testify the belonging of the deceased to an important aristocratic family.

Nothing remains of the first cathedral, built in the early 11th century. A new building was built in 1153 by order of Roger II of which only remains the bell tower embellished with mullioned windows, showing two lions in lava stone, symbol of Norman power and the basic plant of the building. The church was destroyed by the earthquake of 1694 and rebuilt in Baroque style in the eighteenth century with the personal funds of Bishop Spinelli. The central nave has a coffered ceiling with inlays and overhangs in decorated wood, the work of Neapolitan masters. At the bottom of the left aisle, in the lunette, there is the Byzantine fresco of the "Madonna with Child and Archangels", which refers to the iconography of the rock church "Madonna della Croce" of Matera.

Just outside the town, along the road to Rapolla, you can visit the rock church of Santa Margherita carved into the tuff bank and embellished with medieval frescoes made by two painters of different formation, one Byzantine and the other Catalan.
In contrada Giacomelli, you can visit the rock church of S. Lucia. The nave, vaulted barrel, preserves frescoes of Byzantine tradition, depicting the Stories of St. Lucia, commissioned by the priest Biagio in 1292.