An inscription at the top of the fountain fixes the date: 1713. It was built that year, under the “sindacato” of Domenico Prete and with the assistance of the decurion Alessandro Criesia, and it has been the most recognisable monument in Barile ever since. It stands in piazza Garibaldi, once called piazza dello Steccato, the square of the fence: the fountain took its name from the square, not the other way round.
What to see
The façade, in local stone, is divided into three by four Tuscan pilasters on pedestals, set on a pulvinated element. The two outer sections hold niches with shell-shaped basins; the central one carries a commemorative inscription. At the sides, two large volutes clamp the composition together and place it squarely in the Baroque. Anyone with an eye for the orders will notice an oddity in the entablature: the frieze is not bounded below by a tripartite architrave, as the rule would have it, but only above by a cornice topped with decoration aligned with the pilasters.
The lower part says more. Three masks project from the basin and spout the water: they are not decoration but apotropaic figures, meant to keep evil away, and they carry the mixture of religion and superstition that runs through popular culture in Barile and across the Vulture-Melfese. Two smaller volutes frame the basin. Higher up, beneath the cornice, a medallion bears the date of construction and an icon of the Virgin, the Madonna of Constantinople, patron of the town; the coat of arms, held by another apotropaic figure, shows a bunch of grapes above a barrel.
Visiting
The fountain is no longer where it was born. It stood on the opposite side of the square; after the Vulture earthquake of 1930 the square was rearranged and the monument was dismantled and reassembled piece by piece in its present position. That is worth knowing, because what you look at today is a recomposition rather than an original setting. It is out in the open, visible at any hour and free. Start from the medallion at the top and let your eye come down to the masks: from the Virgin to the charms against evil, the double register of the monument lies along that vertical.
Our editors' tip
Once you have found the barrel and the grapes on the coat of arms, look for the Sheshi quarter, set apart from the centre: the 131 caves dug into the volcanic tuff, now the Parco urbano delle Cantine, are where those grapes become Aglianico del Vulture, and it was among those cellars that Pier Paolo Pasolini shot the Nativity of his Gospel According to St Matthew in 1964.