The low hill it stands on is called Tabor, like the mountain of the Transfiguration, and the church up there carries exactly that dedication: the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Nobody in Melfi calls it that, though: for everyone it is the church of the Cappuccini, and Cappuccini is also the hill's second name and the name of the quarter that has grown at its foot.
What to see
Church and convent form a single complex, which local sources date to the thirteenth century, that is to say long before the Capuchin order existed: the friars came later and gave the place the name that stuck. At first the building housed a novitiate, where novices went through their probation; from 1696 it became instead a house of theological and philosophical study, a school for friars already trained. That function explains the setting well: withdrawn, outside the walls and uphill.
Visiting
You come up from the side of Porta Calcinaia and Porta Bagno, beyond the Capigrassi ravine. The last stretch runs through the modern town: the whole area above via Santa Sofia, the old road, is called Cappuccini and was built in the seventies and eighties, taking its name from the convent above it. The complex itself has stayed where it always was, on top of the rise.
Our editors' tip
Walk up, and turn round at least once: between the ravine and the Tabor stood the San Michele and San Martino quarters, born outside the walls in the nineteenth century and so badly hit by the 1930 earthquake that it was decided not to rebuild them. The two large gaps you can pick out from up there, today the market square and piazza Festa Campanile, are what remains of them.