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melfi |
| From the lakes a road runs down to the historic town of MELFI , long
a centre of strategic importance, taken by the Normans in 1041 and their
first capital in the south of Italy. It was in the formidable Castle at
the top of the town that Pope Nicholas II formally recognized the
conquests of Robert Guiscard over the Byzantines and Saracens, thereby
legitimizing the piratical Normans and confirming their place in the
embattled history of the south. It was here also that Guiscard
imprisoned his first wife Alberada, and from where, in 1231, Frederick
II issued his Constitutiones Augustales , reckoned to be the most
comprehensive body of legislation promulgated since the time of
Charlemagne. Repeatedly damaged by earthquakes, the castle now contains
a museum (Mon 2-8pm, Tues-Sun 9am-8pm, L5000/¬2.58) housing prehistoric
finds and objects from the Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras, including
ceramics, jewellery and a candelabra carved with the goddess Ea
abducting the manly looking infant Kephalos. A separate door from the
courtyard gives access to the museum's most celebrated item, an
exquisitely carved Roman sarcophagus from the second century, the so-called
sarcofago di Rapolla , showing the image of the dead girl for whom it
was made, reclining on cushions, with five statuettes of gods and heroes
on the sides. In the centre of town off Via Vittorio Emanuele, is the Duomo , originally twelfth-century but rebuilt following earthquakes. After the 1930 quake, a Byzantine-style Madonna and Child fresco was brought to light, which you can see to the left of the altar; a chapel on the right also has a Madonna, in her role as protectress of the city - a copy of the original statue stolen from here in 1982. The cathedral's campanile has miraculously survived the various cataclysms: the two black stone griffins symbolized the Norman hegemony in the South and are visible everywhere in Melfi, having been adopted as the town's emblem. Melfi has a decent, very cheap hotel , the Savoia at Viale Savoia 21 (tel 0972.23.710; up to L60,000/¬30.99), though it's rather difficult to find: behind the cathedral turn right at Piazza IV Novembre, then left at Via Camassa, then left again onto Viale Savoia. You'll find a pleasant restaurant/pizzeria a little way down from the cathedral at Via Vittorio Emanuele 29, the Delle Rose (closed Mon), with outdoor seating in summer. |