On one wall of the church three knights coming back from the hunt run into three dead men who warn them what they will become: this is the Meeting of the Three Living and the Three Dead, and what survives here is the three nobles and two skeletons only, because the third went with a fallen patch of plaster. The church is cut entirely out of volcanic tuff on the slope of Toppo Sant'Agata, along the road that runs from Melfi to Rapolla, and it was first described in 1899 by Gian Battista Guarini in the review Napoli Nobilissima.
What to see
There is a single nave, twelve metres long, roofed with cross vaults and cut in half by a lowered arch; the main chapel opens at the far end, and four more barrel-vaulted chapels of different depths open along the sides. The paintings were made by several workshops in the first half of the fourteenth century, when the Byzantine tradition was mixing with the Giottesque novelties arriving from Naples: hence the huge eyes and the red cheeks next to drapery that is already Gothic.
In the chapel to the left of the door, painted frames turn the wall into a polyptych: Saint Bartholomew with his own skin folded over his shoulder like a green cloth, the archangel Michael spearing the dragon in a Byzantine loros, a Virgin enthroned in the Hodegetria pose, Saint John the Evangelist pointing at her. Above the high altar, instead, Saint Margaret in princely dress is ringed by eight panels of her life, taken from the Passio of the Greek Theotimus, while five roundels run along the arch with the symbols of the evangelists and a blessing Christ in the middle.
Visiting
The doorway is a pointed arch four metres wide, now closed by a wooden door: the church does not keep museum hours and it is worth asking in town before going up. Once inside, start with the left-hand chapel, then read the eight stories of Saint Margaret from the left and from top to bottom, in the order they were meant to be followed.
Our editors' tip
Take a small torch: the tuff eats the light and the best details sit in shadow, from the little dogs Saint Vitus holds on a leash to the small basin cut to the left of the chancel arch for the ablutions. And keep the two skeletons for last: they are the part that stays in your head longest.