Luco dei Marsi has 5,868 inhabitants on the south-western edge of the Fucino plain. The name comes from a wood: the lucus, the sacred grove of Angizia, an Italic goddess of the Marsi who could charm snakes and heal with herbs. At the edge of the modern village excavations have brought to light Lucus Angitiae, the sanctuary city of the third century before Christ, and in 2003 three statues in good condition were found, one of which may be the goddess herself. Local tradition, however, has it that the name settled on the village much later, when a flood of the Fucino arrived together with an invasion of snakes and forced people to move somewhere safer.
The fact that changed life at Luco is a hydraulic one. When between 1855 and 1876 Alessandro Torlonia drained the Fucino for good, more than fourteen thousand hectares of lake bed emerged, and within a few years the herdsmen and fishermen of Luco became farmers: a whole village changed its trade because a lake had gone. Then came 1915: the Marsica earthquake killed more than two hundred people here and brought down the medieval tower, and three years later the Spanish flu passed over what was left.
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📅 Every year, in the second half of August; the Pentecost Panarda marsicana has been documented since 1479
Luco dei Marsi celebrates Saint Boniface IV in the second half of August. On Pentecost Sunday, the rite of the «Panarda marsicana» is renewed: the feast of the Holy Spirit has been documented since 1479.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Luco dei Marsi, but an easy day trip away.
