Turchetto Festival

The Turchetto Festival

The Turchetto Festival is one of the most cherished events of the summer in the Rieti Sabina region. It is held annually in Belmonte in Sabina, a small municipality in the province of Rieti, in the days immediately following Ferragosto, transforming the village squares and narrow streets into a journey of taste, music, and tradition. In 2025, the festival reached its 39th edition, confirming a continuity that has its roots in the mid-eighties.

The turchetto: a pastry born from legend

The absolute star of the festival is the turchetto, the traditional pastry that gives the event its name. It is prepared with a few simple, genuine ingredients—wheat flour, fresh eggs, sugar, oil, and chopped toasted hazelnuts—and baked according to tradition in a wood-fired oven lit in the square. Originally shaped like a small dumpling, it has evolved over the centuries into the characteristic diamond shape it retains today. According to local legend, the shape recalls the blades and scimitars of Turkish pirates: it is said that in 1530, the women of the village offered these sweets to the attackers led by Barbarossa, successfully averting an attack.

A festival in the heart of Sabina

Belmonte in Sabina stands at an altitude of over 700 meters in the Turano Valley, among the Sabini Mountains, just over seventy kilometers from Rome. The village preserves an ancient heritage, from prehistoric polygonal walls to the churches of the historic center, and is located along the paths of Saint Francis and Saint Benedict. The festival is the perfect opportunity to discover this authentic corner of Lazio, nestled in a landscape of hills and woods beloved by hikers and cyclists.

Taste, music, and conviviality

During the evenings of the event, food stalls offer, alongside the turchetto, local specialties and pizzas freshly baked in the wood-fired oven. The streets and small squares of the town come alive with live music, entertainment, and festive moments that involve residents and visitors until late. It is a family-friendly festival, where the intimate scale of the small village becomes its greatest strength.

Who organizes the festival

The Turchetto Festival is organized by the Pro Loco of Belmonte in Sabina APS, a volunteer association that works year-round to promote the town's folklore and traditions, in collaboration with the UNPLI. It is the volunteers and the women of the village who prepare the turchetti in the days leading up to the event, passing down a recipe and a ritual that belong to the community's collective memory.