The patron saint of Foligno is Saint Felician, bishop and martyr, celebrated on 24 January in the cathedral bearing his name. He was born in Forum Flamini, today the Foligno hamlet of San Giovanni Profiamma, and is considered the town's first bishop: after an episcopate lasting a full 56 years, he died on 24 January 250 during the persecutions against Christians ordered by the emperor Decius, and was buried in a field «near the town of Foligno, on Caesar's bridge». In later centuries, during the decline of the late empire, Foligno suffered floods, earthquakes and devastation of every kind, precisely because of its position along the road leading to Rome.
Foligno is today known above all for the Giostra della Quintana, one of the main events of the town's folk tradition: a costumed knightly tournament in which the ten horse-and-rider pairs of the town's various districts compete twice a year, on the evening of the second or third Saturday of June and in the afternoon of the second or third Sunday of September. The name comes from a street in the ancient Roman military camps, where soldiers trained by charging with a lance at a dummy; the first documented record of the event in Foligno dates from 1448.
