Saint Anthony Abbot Games

A village festival in the heart of the Prenestini Mountains

The Saint Anthony Abbot Games are one of the most cherished winter events in Ciciliano, a small village of just over 1,200 residents perched 619 meters high in the Prenestini Mountains, in the province of Rome, Lazio. Every year, around the feast day of Saint Anthony Abbot—the patron saint of animals and the countryside, celebrated on January 17th—the Ciciliano Pro Loco transforms Piazza Sant'Anna into a large open-air playing field, where residents and visitors of all ages compete in traditional folk challenges.

Traditional games

The heart of the day is the team-based competition featuring games of yesteryear, which once enlivened rural festivals and are now enthusiastically revived here. The festival program includes classics such as:

• the tug-of-war, a test of strength and teamwork;
• the sack race and the egg-and-spoon race, filled with laughter and spills;
• the scocciapigna, a traditional local game;
• gastronomic challenges, from the spaghetti-eating contest to the race for the fastest fork at the table;
• the Palio della Cuccagna, set up in the playground area.

Children up to thirteen years old have dedicated games designed specifically for them, ensuring the festival is a truly shared moment for the entire community.

Delicious prizes to be won

Adding to the competitive spirit are the prizes, strictly gastronomic and tied to the local butchery tradition: hams, cured pork loins, sausages, and crates of beer to celebrate together at the end of the matches. It is the village's way of combining friendly competition, good food, and conviviality.

Devotion and community

The day of games is part of the broader festival dedicated to Saint Anthony Abbot, a figure deeply rooted in the rural culture of Lazio, and also includes moments of devotion with a procession and a blessing. In Ciciliano, as in many villages of the Prenestini and Tiburtini mountains, the saint's feast day is an opportunity to gather, rediscover neighborhood bonds, and pass down the games and rituals of the past to new generations. Organized by the Pro Loco, the festival is free to enter and remains one of the defining events of the Ciciliano calendar, alongside the Spring Festival and other initiatives that mark the village's year.