Festa dei Serpari: The Truth Behind Cocullo's Snake Festival

Every May 1, the small Abruzzo village of Cocullo carries a statue of San Domenico Abate through its streets draped in live snakes. The ritual is often described as a surviving pagan tradition, although historical and municipal evidence tells a more complicated story. The event, known as the Festa dei Serpari, attracts thousands of visitors to a tiny mountain village that is quiet for much of the year.

The Mechanics of the Catch

The festival operates under a strict seasonal and legal framework. Beginning on March 19 and continuing through April 30, authorized serpari (snake catchers) are permitted to collect reptiles from the surrounding mountains. They specifically target non-venomous species native to the area, primarily the robust four-lined snake (Elaphe quatuorlineata, locally known as cervone) and the Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus).

Modern scientific monitoring records dozens of free-ranging snakes involved in the festival, rather than the larger numbers sometimes repeated in popular accounts. The animals are temporarily kept by the serpari before the festival and traditionally fed during this period.

The Procession of San Domenico

On the morning of May 1, after a crowded church mass, the serpari gather in the town square. They extract the live snakes and drape them over the painted wooden statue of San Domenico Abate. The snakes coil around the carved robes, slide across the saint's face, and wrap themselves around the bare arms of the local men carrying the heavy litter.

As the statue sways through the narrow streets, accompanied by ringing church bells and dense crowds, snakes occasionally lose their grip and fall.

The Angitia Conflict

The most persistent narrative surrounding Cocullo is that the festival is an unbroken pagan ritual honoring Angitia, a pre-Roman Marsian divinity associated with healing and magic, and later linked in popular tradition to snake lore. This explanation is widely promoted in popular travel media, and even official regional tourism material still presents the festival within an Angitia-centered historical narrative.

However, Cocullo's own municipal history explicitly calls that association unreliable. Modern anthropology supports this skepticism. In his 1976 ethnography Gli aspetti magico-religiosi di una cultura subalterna italiana, Italian anthropologist Alfonso Maria di Nola challenged the idea of a direct, uninterrupted pagan continuity. Di Nola argued that the link to Angitia was a historical reconstruction—a myth retrojected in later centuries to give a local agrarian practice a more ancient pedigree.

If Not Angitia, Where Did the Ritual Come From?

Instead of an ancient goddess cult, municipal historians point to the medieval ciaralli—ritual specialists associated with snake handling, healing, and practices believed to confer protection from snakebite. Over time, the practices of the ciaralli merged with the cult of San Domenico. Born in the 10th century and shaped by the Benedictine monastic context, San Domenico became venerated in the region as a protector against toothaches, rabid dogs, wolves, and venomous bites.

Di Nola emphasized the practical value of non-venomous snakes in an agrarian society, particularly their role in controlling rodents that threatened stored grain and crops. The ritual places the snakes within a Christian framework in which San Domenico mediates between the daily dangers of the natural world and the human community.

From Snake Catchers to Researchers

In recent years, scientific monitoring and conservation work have been incorporated into the festival. In 2010, a scientific committee was established to monitor the snakes. Herpetologists and veterinarians now examine the reptiles, studying their health, local population dynamics, and the presence of microorganisms. By the time of the 2024 study cited here, more than 1,300 snakes had been examined through the monitoring program.

This transition was highlighted during a 2026 municipal conference titled "From Snake Catchers to Researchers," which presented the results of fifteen years of monitoring the health and conservation of the species involved in the ritual. Research has also identified microorganisms with zoonotic potential in the handled snakes, prompting modern recommendations for hand hygiene among participants and tourists.

Return to the Wild

The festival is strictly regulated to minimize harm to the local ecosystem. The captured snakes are registered, and wildlife regulations mandate that all reptiles must be returned to the same capture sites within three days after the procession. The requirement is intended to reduce the ecological impact of temporarily removing wild snakes from the area.

Visiting the Festa dei Serpari

Cocullo's small size and festival-day traffic restrictions require some advance planning. For the 2026 festival, the municipality arranged free shuttle buses starting at 8:00 AM from designated peripheral parking areas, along with special trains and additional stops on the Rome–Pescara line. Bicycles and scooters were prohibited from entering the event area, and visitors should note that there are no gas stations in Cocullo. Visitors planning a future trip should check the latest municipal notice before traveling.

The strangest thing about Cocullo may not be that a Catholic saint is carried through town covered in snakes. It is that the explanation repeated most often—the survival of an ancient pagan snake cult—may itself be the newest layer of the tradition.