Summer Festival — Varco Sabino Sheep Chop Festival

A village festival in the heart of the Rieti Sabina

Every year, during the week of Ferragosto, the town of Varco Sabino — one of the smallest villages in the Province of Rieti, in the Lazio region — comes alive with the Summer Festival, the summer program organized by the local Pro Loco. Theatrical performances in the local dialect, live music evenings, and gastronomic events turn the historic center into an open-air stage, attracting local families, emigrants returning home for the holidays, and visitors vacationing on the Rieti lakes.

The Sheep Chop Festival, a tradition since 1983

The heart of the festival is the Sheep Chop Festival, which reached its 40th edition in 2024. The bracioletta is a sheep chop cooked over charcoal, a symbolic dish of the pastoral culture that has defined life in these mountains for centuries: an intense, ancient flavor, served well-browned with simple sides, telling the story of transhumance and sheep farming in the Salto and Turano Valleys.

The "Salli e Magna" food trail

Since 2024, the festival has been accompanied by the "Salli e Magna" ("salt and eat," in dialect) food trail: a culinary journey through the streets and squares of the village, with stops dedicated to traditional Sabina products. Along the trail, you can taste:

• pizza rentorta, the typical folded pizza of the area;
• lentils and pecorino cheese;
• pizzicotti, a rustic pasta from the Rieti cuisine;
• french fries, sausage, and, of course, the sheep chop;
• fruit, dessert, and drinks to finish on a high note.

Fried pizza, dialect theater, and music

Another unmissable ritual is the fried pizza tasting, offered in the classic version with sugar or salt, or stuffed with prosciutto, pecorino, and other delicacies. The evenings in Piazza Santa Maria Maddalena are enlivened by an orchestra — in recent years, the Tonino Serva band — while the dialect theater, performed by the locals, keeps the local language alive with comedies that entertain both adults and children. There are also afternoons dedicated to children, with games and free entertainment.

Varco Sabino, the village between the lakes

Perched at an altitude of over 600 meters, Varco Sabino has only a few dozen inhabitants and is the headquarters of the Monti Navegna e Cervia Nature Reserve, the protected area that stretches between Lake Salto and Lake Turano. The Ferragosto festival is the ideal opportunity to discover this authentic corner of the Lazio region: hiking trails, views of the most beautiful artificial lakes in the Rieti Apennines, and genuine hospitality, made of pastoral dishes and squares filled with voices once again.