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 TrinitÃ
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.