The Norman castle of Frederick II and the Rapolla sarcophagus
At the foot of Monte Vulture, the extinct volcano in the north of Basilicata, Melfi is a town of great historical importance, which was the first capital of the Normans in southern Italy. Its imposing castle, built by the Normans in the eleventh century and enlarged by the Swabians, the Angevins and the Aragonese, with towers, walls and a moat, dominates the town from a hill. Here, in 1059, during a council, Pope Nicholas II invested the Norman Robert Guiscard as Duke of Apulia and Calabria, legitimising Norman rule in the South, and here, in 1231, Emperor Frederick II promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi, or "Liber Augustalis", a code of laws for the Kingdom of Sicily, considered one of the most important legal works of the Middle Ages, which laid the foundations of a modern centralised state.
Today the castle houses the Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Melfese "Massimo Pallottino", which displays finds from the area, from prehistory to the Roman age, including weapons, jewellery and ceramics of the Daunian and Lucanian peoples. Its most famous piece is the Sarcofago di Rapolla, a splendid Roman marble sarcophagus of the second century AD, from Asia Minor, found near Rapolla, decorated with statues of gods and heroes in niches and with the reclining figure of a young woman on the lid, one of the most beautiful Roman sarcophagi in Italy. The town also preserves Norman walls, the Cathedral with its Norman bell tower and rock churches with frescoes in the surroundings.
Tip: visit the castle and the museum, then walk along the walls of the old town; taste the Aglianico del Vulture wine.
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