Cocullo: feasts and traditions

Cocullo sits on a hilltop at 897 metres, on the last spur of Monte Catini above the upper Sagittario valley: fewer than two hundred people live across just over 31 square kilometres, with Casale as its only hamlet. The origin of the name is uncertain; one theory links it to Koukolon, a Roman-era settlement mentioned by the geographer Strabo and traditionally placed around Casale. The area belonged to the Marsi, an ancient Italic people famed for their power over snakes.

In the Middle Ages the Lombards built a fortified outpost here; the village later passed to the Counts of Celano and, in the 15th century, to the Piccolomini family. The earthquakes of 1706 and 1915 hit it hard, but the old core still has the San Nicola tower, built for defence and later given a belfry and a town clock, remains of the medieval walls and gates, and the 13th-century church of Santa Maria delle Grazie with its rose window and 16th-century frescoes.

The patron saint is Saint Dominic Abbot, a Benedictine monk whom popular devotion invokes against snakebite and toothache. Cocullo keeps one of his molars and a shoe from his mule, and every 1 May this quiet mountain village welcomes thousands of visitors for the Snake Festival, when the saint's statue is carried in procession covered in live snakes.