The Castello Pandone with its life-size painted horses
In the valley of the Volturno, at the foot of the mountains on the border with Campania and Lazio, Venafro is an ancient town of Samnite and Roman origin, the ancient Venafrum, famous in antiquity for its olive oil, praised by Latin writers such as Horace and Pliny as one of the best in the empire, and still today surrounded by olive groves, protected by a regional olive park. The town preserves the remains of a Roman theatre and of an amphitheatre, whose elliptical shape has been incorporated into the houses of the district called "Verlasce", a beautiful Romanesque Cathedral and many churches and palaces.
The most surprising monument of Venafro is the Castello Pandone, a castle of Lombard origin, transformed in the Renaissance into an elegant noble residence by the Pandone family. Between 1521 and 1527, Count Enrico Pandone, a great lover of horses, had the walls of the rooms on the main floor painted with a unique cycle of frescoes: about twenty life-size horses from his stables, depicted in profile with great realism, with their names, ages and the names of the people to whom they were given as gifts, in a sort of illustrated catalogue of his breeding, an extraordinary and rare example of Renaissance secular painting. Enrico Pandone did not enjoy his frescoes for long: in 1528, having betrayed the Emperor Charles V by siding with the French, he was arrested and beheaded in Naples. Today the castle houses the Museo Nazionale del Molise, with works of art from the region.
Tip: visit the castle to see the frescoed horses; taste the local extra-virgin olive oil, praised since Roman times.
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