venosa
 
If Melfi preserves the appearance of a dark medieval town, VENOSA has an attractive airiness, a harmonious place, rich with historical associations. Known in antiquity as Venusia, it was in its time the largest colony in the Roman world, and much is made of the fact that it was the birthplace of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to Italians as Orazio and to the English as Horace (65-68 BC); his supposed house lies past the cathedral on the right. Venosa's web of narrow streets is full of reminders of the town's long past. The tomb of the Roman general Marcellus, ambushed and killed by Hannibal here in 208 BC, is off Via Melfi, while a medieval washing-place lies near the duomo on the old town's long main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele. At the top of this street, a formidable Aragonese Castello dominates the spacious and arcaded Piazza Umberto, and houses a well-presented archeological museum (daily 9am-8pm, sometimes open until 11pm on Sat; L5000/¬2.58), displaying finds from local excavations, mainly coins, frescoes, fragments of mosaics and older prehistoric remains from the Vulture area. Many of the Roman exhibits here were unearthed in Venosa's archeological park , a twenty-minute walk away at the far end of the corso (daily: March 9am-6pm; April-Sept 9am-7pm; Oct & Feb 9am-5.30pm; Nov & Jan 9am-5pm; Dec 9am-4.30pm; free). Here you can see the sketchy remains of Roman baths and houses as well as a paleo-Christian baptistry, while across the road lies an amphitheatre (for which you must ask at the ticket-office for entry), and there are Jewish catacombs further along the road.

The excavations are overlooked by Venosa's most striking attraction, the Abbazia della Trinità (daily 8am-1pm & 3-5.30pm), a complex of churches begun in the mid-eleventh century that was the resting place of a number of Norman bigwigs, including Robert Guiscard. The first and greatest of the Norman adventurers in southern Italy, he's thought to be buried along with three of his brothers in a single uninscribed tomb on the right of the nave, while his divorced first wife Alberada occupies a slightly nobler tomb on the opposite side. The church also displays murals and mosaics, including a good fresco of the Byzantine St Apollonia hidden in the recess of an arch in front of Guiscard's supposed tomb; more frescoes showing Christian imagery can be seen in the crypt. Backing on to the older church, the Chiesa Nuova was begun in around 1100, a gigantic construction that was too ambitious to be properly finished - only the lower part of the walls and the apse were completed, incorporating fragments from the Roman ruins.

Venosa has an excellent place to stay , the Orazio , a beautifully restored old house at Corso Vittorio Emanuele 142 (tel 0972.31.135; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98); it's well worth telephoning ahead to guarantee a room. If it's full, you'll have to make do with the Villa del Sorriso , a modern place a couple of kilometres west of the centre at Via Appia 135 (tel 0972.35.975; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48). As for restaurants , your best bet is Il Grifo , behind the church of San Filippo Neri across from the castle, where you can enjoy such dishes as pastoni all' erbe - ravioli with spinach and ricotta smothered in fresh herbs (closed Tues).