Melfi Geography

Melfi sits at about 530 metres on the eastern side of Monte Vulture, and the volcano explains almost everything about the area.

The volcano

Vulture is an extinct volcano reaching 1,326 metres, isolated on the eastern edge of the Apennines and well away from the Tyrrhenian volcanic chain that produced Vesuvius and Etna. Its last activity was tens of thousands of years ago. What it left is a cone of weathered lava and ash, wooded on its upper slopes and cultivated below.

The crater lakes

Two lakes, Monticchio Grande and Monticchio Piccolo, fill craters on the southern flank, ringed by beech and chestnut forest. The abbey of San Michele is built into the cliff above them, over a cave.

Volcanic soil

The ash and tuff weather into a dark, mineral-rich soil that holds water well — unusual in a region that is mostly clay and limestone. It is why the Aglianico grape does what it does here, and why the slopes are chestnut and vine rather than the bare wheat of the Basilicata interior.

Water

Rain filters through the volcanic rock and emerges as springs around the base, several of them bottled commercially. The Vulture is one of Italy's significant mineral water sources.

On the edge of Puglia

Melfi sits near the Ofanto, the river that drains this side of the Apennines to the Adriatic and forms much of the boundary with Puglia. The town has always looked east: the plain of Foggia begins within half an hour, and the wheat country beyond it is closer than the rest of Basilicata. Rapolla, Venosa and Rionero lie within a short drive on the same volcanic skirt.

Earthquakes

This is an active seismic zone. The town has been badly damaged repeatedly — most severely in 1851, and again in 1930 and 1980 — which is why so little medieval fabric survives below the castle.