Venosa (Lucano: Vënòsë [və'noʊzə]) is a town and comune in the province of Potenza, in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, in the Vulture area.

He was said to have moved to Magna Graecia in southern Italy following the Trojan War, seeking a life of peace and building the town and its temples to appease the anger of Aphrodite for the destruction of her beloved Troy.

It remained an important place under the Empire as a station on the Via Appia, though Theodor Mommsen's description of it as having branch roads to Aequum Tuticum and Potentia, and Kiepert's maps annexed to the volume, do not agree with one another.

[5] After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Venusia was sacked by the Heruls, and in 493 AD it was turned into the administrative centre of the area in the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, although later this role was moved to Acerenza.

His later successor Frederick II had a castle built here where a Lombard outpost existed before, which was to house the Treasury (Ministry of Finances) of the Kingdom of Sicily.

Despite the plague that had reduced its population from the 13,000 of 1503 to 6,000, Venosa had a flourishing cultural life under the Gesualdos: apart from the famous Carlo, other relevant figures of the period include the poet Luigi Tansillo (1510–1580) and the jurist Giovanni Battista De Luca (1614–1683).

In 1861, after the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during the Italian unification, Venosa was occupied by some bands of brigands under the command of Carmine Crocco in order to restore the Bourbon power in Basilicata.