The village was born around 898 from the monks of Farfa fleeing the Saracens: their abbey had fallen after seven years of siege, and one of the three groups they split into came this far. On 20 June 934 abbot Ratfredus had the body of Saint Victoria carried up monte Matenano, and from her the village took its name. From its abbey comes the Ritmo di sant'Alessio, one of the oldest texts in the vernacular.
In 1966 Robert Crichton set here his novel «The Secret of Santa Vittoria»; when Stanley Kramer made a film of it in 1969, however, he did not shoot it in the village: Santa Vittoria had become too modern to play itself in the war years. There remain the tower of abbot Odorisio and, on the hill, the Chapel of the Innocents, frescoed in the fourteenth century.
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📅 Every year, on 23 December
On 23 December Santa Vittoria in Matenano celebrates its patroness Saint Victoria, whose name became part of the town's own name and to whom a church and a sanctuary are dedicated.
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 Santa Vittoria in Matenano, but an easy day trip away.
