During the celebrations of the Assumption and St. Rocco in Villa Santo Stefano, there is the Festival of Panarda.
It consists in cooking and distribution of bread and chickpeas to the citizens, foreigners and tourists.
In the early days of August several quintals (about 100 kilograms per quintal) of chickpeas are cleaned so that, on August 14, they can be put 'to soak' into thirty copper boilers.
Fires are lit in the square with oak firewood and at two in the morning of the sixteenth day they start cooking them on the fires.
During the procession of the 16th, the Archpriest blesses the boilers, the bread and starts the rite of distribution with attendants in costume.
The origins date back to the fifteenth century, when famines were frequent and this is why the celebrations of saints were often accompanied by the distribution of food to the poor.
Probably the Panarda was established in this spirit, and, until a few years ago, was distributed free to poor families.
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