Patron saint festival In 111 days
Feast of Saint Blaise
📅 Every year, on 3 February
On 3 February Fontecchio, a municipality of 410 inhabitants in the province of L'Aquila, celebrates its patron Saint Blaise; the town has the Torre dell'Orologio.
Every evening the tower clock strikes fifty times. They are the days that, as the village tells it, the Spanish siege of 1648 lasted: the serious sources say about ten, but here they count fifty. It ended, they say, when the marchioness Giulia Muzj, the baron's widow, fired a swivel gun from her palace and killed the leader of the besiegers.
Two centuries earlier, in 1425, Fontecchio had been one of the few castles in the area to drive off Braccio da Montone. On the coat of arms is the fourteenth-century fountain that stands in the square, and beneath it the word «Fedeltà», loyalty. On Monte San Pio, which here they also call Pilate's Mountain, a legend has it that Pontius Pilate ended up.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Fontecchio 1
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Near Fontecchio
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