Cepagatti has 10,449 inhabitants on the hilly side of the Val Pescara, and it has one of the strangest names in Abruzzo: it comes from cipaiàttë, which around here is the wild garlic, from the Latin cepa, onion, and cattus, cat — because the dialect calls "cats" those plants whose sweet bulb stands in for the onion. It appears for the first time in 1147, written Zepagattum.
The village grew up around a Roman villa which, with the invasions, was fortified and then became a castle. What remains of it is the Torre Alex, with walls three metres thick, that is roughly ten Roman feet: a measure that suggests late-antique origins, perhaps the Byzantine garrison that was stationed here. Beside it is the little church that Olimpia Valignani had raised to thank Saint Roch for the end of the plague of 1656. And since 1985 the lanes of the centre have been covered with the drawings by which the artist Mira Cancelli and her pupils have told the town's history and its people on the walls of the houses.
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📅 Every year, on 16 August, with the Palio di San Rocco
Cepagatti celebrates its patrons, Saint Roch and Saint Lucy, on 16 August: the Palio di San Rocco is held on the same day.
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 Cepagatti, but an easy day trip away.
