Melfi
Melfi Geography & Climate
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.
Climate Patterns
Melfi has an inland climate with real seasons, quite unlike the Basilicatan coast.
Summer
July and August are hot and dry, with highs usually between 30 and 33°C, though the altitude means nights cool down properly and the humidity is low. It is more comfortable than the Puglian plain immediately east.
Winter
Winter is cold. January highs sit around 8 to 9°C, frost is frequent, and snow falls most years in the town and regularly on Monte Vulture above it. The upper slopes can hold snow for weeks.
Rain
Around 700 millimetres a year, higher than most of Basilicata, because the mountain intercepts weather. Autumn and winter are genuinely wet, and the Vulture slopes are green in a way the rest of the region is not.
Spring and autumn
The best of the year. May and June are green, warm and clear; September and October bring the grape harvest and then the chestnuts, with the beech woods around the lakes turning. October here is the single best time to visit.
Up at the lakes
Monticchio, in its craters at around 700 metres and enclosed by beech forest, runs cooler and damper than the town and is the obvious place to be in August. Mist sits in the craters on autumn mornings, and the woods turn late — the colour usually peaks in the first half of November, weeks after the vineyards below have been picked.
Altitude matters
Between the town at 530 metres and the summit at 1,326 there can be a difference of six or seven degrees and an entirely different season on the ground.