The name of Scurcola is a job. It comes from the Latin excubiae and the Lombard sculk, both meaning sentinel or guard: the village stands on a height controlling the routes that converge on the Fucino basin, from Rome to the west, from the Adriatic to the east, from the Sabina to the north and from Campania to the south. The words sculka and sculcula appear in Lombard law itself, in the edict of Rothari of 643 and then in the rules of king Rachis a century later, and the same toponym recurs elsewhere in Italy: at Sgurgola, in the territories of Celano and Cugnoli, at the mouth of the Vomano.
On the Piani Palentini, below the village, in 1268 the battle of Tagliacozzo was fought, the last act of the war for the south between Conradin of Swabia and Charles the First of Anjou: Charles won with a cavalry manoeuvre and had Conradin beheaded in Naples; in the same year he moved the capital of the kingdom from Palermo to Naples. On the plain stand the ruins of the Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria della Vittoria, built precisely to remember that day. Older still is the pieve of Sant'Egidio, of around the year one thousand, one of the earliest churches of the Marsica, on the road pilgrims took to Rome. Scurcola was raised to the rank of city in 2011.
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📅 Every year, on the first Sunday of July
Scurcola Marsicana celebrates its patrons Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Vincent Ferrer together on the first Sunday of July.
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 Scurcola Marsicana, but an easy day trip away.
