A landslide in 1845 uncovered what was left of a church cut into the rock. All that survives of the Madonna delle Spinelle today is the end chapel: the remains of the nave were levelled in the seventies to make the forecourt that now lies in front of it. In the Middle Ages it was not even a building in its own right, but the closing section of the basilica of Santo Stefano, an early Christian structure with several naves and chapels attached.
What to see
The chapel is hexagonal in plan: six half-columns rise to carry a cornice, and that geometry is more or less all that is left of the original layout. There is no façade to look at and no nave to walk down, you step straight into the end of the building.
A stubborn tradition clings to the place: meetings and assemblies are said to have been held here, and the Norman soldiers led by Bohemond are said to have set out from here for the First Crusade to the Holy Land, the crusade Pope Urban II called at Melfi itself during the council of 1089. Another story, partly borne out, tells of a long underground tunnel linking the complex to the castle.
Visiting
The open space in front of the chapel is not just a forecourt: it is the church. Stop there before you go in and take the measure of what is missing, then look for the cornice and count the half-columns, there are six. There is a single room and it is soon exhausted: the time is better spent outside, piecing the vanished naves back together by eye.
Our editors' tip
Walk on to the castle afterwards. Legend runs an underground passage from here to it, and the ground you cover on the surface tells you, better than any information panel, what digging it would have meant.