Santi Cosma e Damiano has 6,882 inhabitants between the slopes of the Aurunci and the plain of the Garigliano, which here forms the border with Campania. The name is that of two doctor saints, brothers, beheaded near Antioch: tradition tells that they passed through here on their way to Rome and stopped in a cave, and that beside that cave a chapel was built which later became the town's church. For centuries the place was called simply i Casali, the farmsteads.
At the mouth of the Garigliano, between 881 and 915, the Saracens held a fortified camp. In August 915 they were faced by a Christian league put together by pope John X, with the Lombard princes, the dukes of Naples and of Gaeta and even the Byzantine emperor: the fighting took place where the locality is still called Vattaglia, which in dialect means battle. Of that occupation, a thousand years later, there remain the place names, a few surnames and certain words of the dialect. The hardest history, though, is recent: between 1943 and 1944 the town lay on the Gustav Line, and nine months of bombardment wiped out almost all the built-up area. In 2002 the Republic awarded it the gold medal for civil valour.
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📅 Every year, on 26 September
On 26 September the municipality of Santi Cosma e Damiano, which takes its name from them, celebrates its patrons; the village also holds a rural Carnival with allegorical floats built by its districts.
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 Santi Cosma e Damiano, but an easy day trip away.
