Jewish Catacombs

dated between the III and VII century A.D. were discovered in 1853. They testify to the presence of a flourishing Jewish community local services between the late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. They appear as a series of corridors excavated on the hill of La Maddalena, in a peripheral zone of Venosa, along which are located the burials, adorned with iconographies and Jewish epigraphs. In total, have returned a seventy epigraphs, with epitaphs in Latin, Hellenistic Greek and Hebrew, one of which is dated exactly to 521 A.D.

The Catacombs provide the best cross-section of society southern jewish in those centuries and document the level of integration and participation of the Jewish community in public life local. The degree of integration is also witnessed by the "contamination" with the onomastics of society not Jewish and from social level relatively high occupied by some Jewish families of Venosa. Alongside these catacombs, there is another structure that hosts the Christian a proximity which provides a tangible witness of the climate of peaceful coexistence and tolerance between Jews and Christians.