First Published: 15 Jan 2009To our west rises Vesuvius, part symbolic, part daily reality but always a testament to the fact that life is precarious. To our east alongside the River Ofanto, which also flows by Calitri, is the battlefield of Cannae where on a single day in 216 BC 50,000 Romans gave up their spirits fighting the Carthaginian, Hannibal.
Having been in Calitri for some time, we were in the mood for a road trip and while both Vesuvius and Cannae are interesting places to visit, among many, we chose a more innocuous and closer destination, Venosa. We chose Venosa on that pleasant August day not for its history of devastation or human carnage but because of two rather innocent influences. The first of these was word that there was a wine confederation in Venosa where you could buy wines like ‘Aglianico del Vulture’ (pronounced VOOL-too-reh) or other less expensive vintages in bulk, even bring your own bottles to have refilled! The second was a tip that while there to be sure to visit Trinity Church. I was spring loaded to go for just the novelty of a wine refill! We knew nothing about either place but were game for an early morning jaunt and what might materialize along the way.
We left by 8am after a stop-off at Mario’s Café where we bumped into Josephine, the operator of a local market, who insisted on buying us a cappuccino for the road. We then passed through the heart of town and proceeded to zigzag down the mountain road from our Calitrian perch. At the base turned left onto the road toward Melfi. Soon afterward, we picked up signs for Venosa. We were on our way.
We gradually wound our way upward as we neared Venosa, situated as it is on a plateau. We stopped briefly to gaze out over what appeared to be an abandoned village in the valley just below Venosa. A lonely church and a few intact buildings peppered the valley and cast an eerie ghost town feeling - giving rise to questions about the history of this place. Its story would have to wait, for after a few additional climbing turns, we entered the sprawling community of Venosa. Today it is an impressive, well-developed community even though located in what appears to be a relatively isolated area. Its apparent current prosperity is difficult to explain, at least for a new visitor, but I suspect it has something to do with the miles on end of vineyards which extend from the city.
Venosa was founded by the Romans in 291 BC. Disagreement exists concerning the exact origin of its ancient name, ‘Venusia’. The most widely accepted theory holds that the city was founded in honor of Venus, the goddess of love. Some say its naming can be attributed to the village’s delicious wines (‘vinosa’), while still others claim it is due to the many “veins” of water. There is even one faction which theorizes that the name refers to the town’s windy climate (‘ventoso’).
However it came by its name, there is no dispute that in ancient times this was a strategic town along the famous Appian Way, the ‘Queen of Roads’, which stretched from Rome all the way to the port city of Brindisi. In fact, there is a ‘Via Appia’ there today which you can stroll down, though no longer the humble lane of its namesake. Roads from the Ionian Sea, further south, and from inland areas passed exclusively through here and added to its ancient prosperity. Its position made it an important town even during the Middle Ages. In the year 622 it was occupied by the Byzantines and successively conquered at two different periods by the Saracens. It was liberated in 866 by the Emperor Ludwig and re-conquered by the Longobards of Benevento. By 976 it was back in Byzantine hands. Then came the Normans.
We didn’t have a cantina address for Margaret to use but I’m not the type male who refuses to ask for directions. The alternative is to aimlessly wonder around. This I feel is inefficient and nerve racking so I ask when I can and then ask again when I can no longer remember all the ’dritto’s” (straight aheads), ‘a sinistra’s’ (to the left) and ‘a destra’s’ (to the right) which ensue. So we got little doses of directions to the cantina from the frequent inquiries we made out our window of various passers-by, poor devils. We soon spotted the storage tanks, fenced parking lot and non-descript cantina buildings. A little closer, a sign announced we were there. Wouldn’t you know it, it was right on Via Appia! It was quiet, the lot empty and for a time we suspected we’d arrived on a day when the cantina was closed. On closer inspection, the Cantina di Venosa was most assuredly open.
Reminiscent of a western paperback novel, when a cowboy ties up his horse and enters the saloon, Maria Elena and I, now dry and dusty from our own journey, having had our heads out the windows especially toward the end, entered the cantina! Founded in 1957 initially with 27 members, Cantina di Venosa today boasts an association of 500 members with about 900 hectars of vineyards. Inside in a large display hall, arrayed with bottles and bins of small demijohns, we wondered about inspecting labels and displays until a workman from the adjacent production area showed us to a wine sampling station. This was a self-serve sampling bar of 10-12 white and red wines. Small cups were provided to sample the various offers.
Wine doesn’t lie. Truth be, it is incapable of lying. Just taste it and the wine will always tell you its truth! Picked early, too late, too strong a tannin aftertaste, too sweet, a weak bouquet, .... ? Only the truth is revealed when you sip its offering and this we did of them all! We finally narrowed it down to just a handful and after further rigorous analysis, most assuredly based on generous samplings, we bought 2 five-liter demijohns of red (9,50E) and another of white (3,25E). Talk about great value for your money! We speculated that this amount should hold us for a while. Trying to judge the amount of wine to buy is always an inexact science since so many imprecise variables come into plan and buying too much leads to waste when it is left behind. This latter consideration is unacceptable and to be avoided at all cost! Our primary mission accomplished, with the estimated right amount of wine in tow, we were now off to explore Venosa.
Venosa is famed for being the birthplace of the Roman poet Horace perhaps the greatest of the Latin lyric poets, who was born there in 65 BC. Horace once wrote:
I was a small child and on Mount Vulture in Puglia,tired of playing and sleepy, heedless I lay down and miraculous dovescovered me with leaves: …. Horace, "Odes", Book III, n. 4, "Come Down from the Skies and Sing a Beautiful Song"
Today from Calitri, I can look out of our windows onto that same ‘Mount Vulture’, an extinct volcano to our east and am both humbled and awed to think that all those eons ago the Great Gatsby of his day, Horace, looked on these same heights from his vantage point in Venosa. The trace of Horace’s hand on Venosa are impossible to find today but not so of the Normans.
The Normans like their predecessors left traces of their time here in one of the most important and grandest buildings of southern Italy, the Church of the Holy Trinity, also known as the ‘Unfinished Church’ because, you guessed it, the building was never completed. Robert Guiscard, an audacious adventurer, once Count then Duke and later Prince, who would be king if left to him, intended the new church as a pantheon for his dynasty. After his death, however, and due to waning Norman power, its construction was forever interrupted. Following Robert’s death in 1085, his remains were brought back to Venosa. The tomb of this Norman crusader to this day lies in the restored nave of Trinity Church in the family vault.
The abbey complex of the Holy Trinity, of which the Unfinished Church is part and which would have extended to the east behind the main altar there today, unfolded over many centuries. It was begun in the 5th century, when the Old Church was constructed upon the remains of a Roman temple. The Longobards added the first Benedictine monastery in 942, which was subsequently enlarged by the Normans. Inside the church today, it is a case of the old order right beside the new regime - one built upon the foundations of the other, with fascinating consideration by the new for the old. This was most evident where the modern floor was intentionally suspended over the ancient temple ruins which lay below. In places, in fact, the floor is cut away to permit views of the ancient foundation of partial walls and mosaic floors (see related photo album). Of the unfinished church and dream of Robert Guiscard, the scaffolds are long gone. There remain only some external walls and the silent sentinels of six stone columns as testament to work once begun but never completed. It is almost as if the workmen had gone off to lunch but would soon return.
We found the ‘unfinished church’ beside the ruins of the ancient Roman town and together the ensemble was fascinating in its devastation and incompleteness. In this adjacent archeological dig one can visit the Roman baths with its mosaic floor of marine motifs, the remains of private Roman homes including a patrician house of the 1st century AD, called “the House of Horace,” even an amphitheater. The excavations have also brought to light Jewish catacombs and attest to the presence of a once thriving Jewish community there. If Roman ruins are not old enough for you, a nearby Palaeolithic era site dates to a time period 600,000-300,000 years ago! I guess in the timeline of things Maria Elena and I were a little late getting there!
The city itself enjoys an air of prosperity with both a modern part and a more narrow-laned ‘centro storico’. One fine building, just down the street from Trinity Church, at first appeared open to the public but on closer inspection we discovered it was an institute for handicapped boys. One of the supervisors showed us around while the voices of the boys could be heard upstairs at lunch. The day was getting on and the idea of lunch was appealing about then so with Margaret’s assistance we navigated the maze of one-way streets, said goodby to Venosa for now and headed back toward Malfi and Calitri.
Just outside of Malfi, on S.S.303, we stopped at an old haunt for lunch. The food at Agriturismo Sant’Agata is so rich and first-rate that I swear it should be served with an arterial stint! That day we enjoyed:
Antipasti: Peppers, eggplant, potatoes, ricotta fresca, mozzarella balls, fried zucchini patti, fried zucchini blossoms, and meat in oil (surprisingly the dishes just kept coming!) Orecchiette pasta (‘ears’) with pancetta and sausage ‘gravy’, followed by Grilled veal and salad Two bottles of water and wine
All toll, 35,00E Ours was an out and back trip, but Venosa is definitely worthy of a return visit to explore, among other things, its circa 1470 Norman castle (complete with moat, though dry) and the nearby WW II B24 Liberator bomber airfield (if you can find it). On a whim someday, head on over to Venosa yourself. Though once on the main thoroughfare of its day, today it lies far outside the customary tourist circuit, which means that should you visit, you won’t see any buses disgorging hundreds of people. You’ll have the place pretty much to yourself. Hesitate for a moment when you are there. Stare off toward Mount Vulture as if looking at something in your mind and imagine lively Venosa as it once was in its heady days when the traffic of a million feet moved the riches of the East onward to Rome and the mighty legions of Rome, touting their Eagles, trudged along the Appian Way on their way to glory and a place in the annals of history.
Carpe Diem,
Paolo
For related photos, click here on Eyes Over Italy. Look for and click on a photo album entitled “Vernosa”
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