Introduction
“Venusia” was inhabited by Samnite populations before the arrival, at the beginning of the third century BC. of the Romans; according to what Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports, it was already protected by mighty walls and enjoyed the typical prerogatives of a “res publica”: its own senate, its own laws, its own army and its own coins, minted with the monogram VE. In 291 BC the Romans deduced a colony with 20,000 people, to reaffirm the submission and strategic role for the control of the Apennine areas and the roads between Campania and Puglia. It is precisely in this context that the decision was placed to pass the Via Appia from here, in 190 BC, in its extension to the port of “Brundium” (Brindisi) on the Adriatic. The road was a driving force for the economy of the town which was counted among the top 18 cities of the peninsula.
A splendor and prosperity enhanced by the literary fortune met in Rome by Horace, born in Venosa in 65 BC, and of which architectural testimony remains in the structures of the Archaeological Park. The prosperity of the city remained so until the Late Antiquity, while starting from the 5th century AD and until the middle of the 11th century, it was a succession of invasions, which gave way to the systematic dismantling of the Roman buildings to reuse the materials. The arrival of the Benedictines and Normans (1042) marked a new turning point and a rediscovered well-being, documented by the history of the abbey of the Trinity and by the passage, at the behest of Frederick II, into state-owned possessions, in which it remained until the early 15th century century. It was Maria Donata Orsini, in 1443, who brought it as a dowry to Pirro del Balzo, to whom Venosa owes the new urban layout, with the strengths of the Castle and the Cathedral. The plague of 1503 reduced the inhabitants from 18,000 in the 15th century to 6,000 in the second half of the following, when Philip II granted the title to the princes of Venosa to the Gesualdo. The feudal period was characterized by a heavy economic crisis, which paradoxically was countered by intense cultural activity: an important school of law was active here, in 1582 the Accademia dei Piacevoli and Soavi was founded, in 1612 the academy of the Rinascenti. A natural inclination to knowledge continued over time, given that Venosa gave birth to important political figures (the father of Francesco Saverio Nitti, Vincenzo Tangorra who was minister of the treasury of the Kingdom of Italy and of art as well as the family of sculptors and painters Di Chirico.
