Villa Santo Stefano

The feast of San Rocco here is called the Panarda, and it goes back to around 1601. It begins on the evening of 15 August, when the wooden statue of the saint leaves the church of San Sebastiano and goes up in procession to the collegiate church inside the old town; then, in piazza Umberto I, the masters of the table and some thirty panardari light forty copper cauldrons and set seven quintals of chickpeas to cook in them all night long. At noon on the 16th the chickpeas are blessed together with the small loaves, and here the feast does something that is not done elsewhere: nobody eats in the square. Each server comes to the church forecourt with an earthenware jug and receives the chickpeas, the bread and the address of the person that portion is to be carried to. The costumes are green and amaranth.

The village carries the name of its saint, and the coat of arms shows him: Saint Stephen the protomartyr on a golden field, holding the palm of martyrdom. There were too many Santo Stefano in Italy, though, and in 1872 the comune put the word Villa in front so as not to be taken for the others. At the entrance to the old town, on the other hand, stands a tower with a far older name: they call it the tower of King Metabus, the Volscian king and father of Camilla who, according to the Aeneid, used to hunt in these parts — Virgil also names the Amaseno, the river that runs along the bottom of the valley. The tower itself was built by the De Ceccano at the beginning of the thirteenth century, when they fortified the village to gather the country people inside it.