The patron saints of Sant'Alfio are the three martyred brothers Alfio, Filadelfo and Cirino, celebrated on the first Sunday of May in the church dedicated to them. In 253 AD the three were deported from Vaste to Sicily to be martyred: during the journey towards Lentini, crossing the place where the town bearing their name now stands, according to tradition the «miracle of the beam» occurred, when a sudden wind arose as they passed, tearing away the beam they carried on their shoulders.
The celebrations begin already on the last Sunday of April, called by the locals «domenica dell'entrata» (entry Sunday): the celebrations officially open with a fireworks display of a hundred shots, fired at exactly noon. The municipal territory is also home to the famous Castagno dei Cento Cavalli, a multi-millennial tree thought to be between 3,600 and 4,000 years old, linked to the legend that Queen Joanna I of Anjou sheltered from a sudden storm with her retinue of a hundred knights under its imposing canopy. In the 19th century Sant'Alfio experienced a period of great prosperity as a wine producer and exporter, before a crisis in the 1920s caused prices to collapse.
