Cultural Attractions in Basilicata Italy

Matera Melfi Venosa Cultural Attractions and Mount Vulture’s Volcano and Wine

Basilicata, also known as Lucania, is a southern Italian region bordering with Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south, with one coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea between Campania and Calabria, and a longer one in the Gulf of Taranto on the Ionian Sea.

Matera’s stone dwellings are a unique, cave dwelling eco urban system, dating back to prehistory, and as such are a Unesco site since 1993, the first such appellation for Southern Italy. They are also efficient users of water, land and energy natural resources.

Melfi the emperor Frederic II proclaimed his "Constitutiones Augustales" at the Melfi Castle which retains to this day many of its medieval features. Among the modifications over the centuries:  the interior has been trnsformed into a baronial manor, albeit in the Norman-Swabian style; the Throne Room and Armigeri Hall maintain their Angevin look; finally, the Sala delle Scodelle, where the Melfi Constitution was proclaimed. The castle hosts the Melfi National Museum and archeological documents from the Vulture community, including bronze, iron and neolithic age finds, as well as Asia Minor’s Rapolla Sarcophagus.

Venosa is home to the famed poet Horace - Quintus Horatius Flaccus - Santissima Trinità Abbey, with an early Christian Church built over a pagan temple and a more recent one, never completed. An adjacent archeological park preserves finds from the Roman republic to the Middle Ages. The historic center features a beautiful borgo, a castle, Horace’s home and the Cathedral of Saint Andrew.

Monticchio Lakes and the Vulture Natural History Museum

The Monticchio Lakes are situated on Mount Vulture’s southwestern slopes over several vulcanic craters. S. Michael Archangel’s Abbey was built around a grotto inhabited by Basilian monks. Vulture’s National Museum of Natural History recounts the 750 thousand year history of this community and of a pleistocene volcano dormant for 130 thousand years. The museum is unique in that it is located in the natural setting that it recounts.

Mount Vulture is located 56 km (35 mi) north of Potenza and Basilicata region’s most important wine growing community with its Aglianico Vulture DOC wine. At 1,326 m (4,350 feet), it is unique among Italy’s volcanoes due to its location east of the Apennine mountain range.