The façade is Renaissance, but it is only a front: the rest of the fabric is thought to be medieval, and the building does nothing to hide the join. It belonged for a long time to the Mandina, one of Melfi's wealthy families, and that change of hands is where the double name still in use comes from. For a while the place stopped being a home altogether: the law court moved in.
What to see
The real point is the contrast between the building's two natures: the regular design of the Renaissance front and the older mass standing behind it, which no later work has entirely smoothed over.
The palace looks onto a public garden where two bronze busts stand, one of senator Floriano Del Zio and one of the deputy Arduino Severini. The Araneo surname, incidentally, turns up elsewhere in Melfi: it belonged to Gennaro Araneo, the local historian who in 1866 wrote down the town's origin traditions, including the one that brought its founders over from Ragusa.
Visiting
This is a building to be read from the outside, and the right place to do it from is the garden it opens onto: from there you get the whole façade, which rarely happens in the alleys of the old town. Melfi has several noble palaces recycled into something else, Palazzo della Corte served as town hall for over a century and Palazzo Donadoni houses the civic museum, and this one, with its spell as a courthouse, belongs on the same list.
Our editors' tip
Do not stop at the front: walk round the building. The Renaissance is the face turned towards the garden, and one corner is enough for the palace to change register and go back to being the older structure it always was. Then return to the two busts and read the names: a senator and a deputy, in bronze, under the windows of what used to be the courthouse.