At least 15,000 people in Cocullo for the serpari festival in honor of San Domenico: Japanese with small umbrellas, Germans with tourist brochures, French in love with snakes, Americans from Chicago, reporters and film-makers. But also the pilgrims who left early in the morning, wept when the statue passed, picked up the holy earth inside the church to put it in their homes.

For the Certamen Ovidianum a group of students made a survey and a research on the Latin poet. They collected popular beliefs on Ovid: a magician, a damned soul, the custodian of a mythical treasure. The real Ovid died in exile at Tomis, on the Black Sea. And there is also a confusion of this figure with Celestine 5th: many believe that the ruins on Monte Morrone are from the Villa di Ovidio, built in one night, where the treasure was kept and found by Celestino V who used it to build the Abbey.

On Saturday and Sunday the 16th edition of this festival, with special gastronomic help from the renowned cooks of Villa Santa Maria, preparing of course dishes with this great product of Abruzzese agriculture.

The miracle of San Domenico the Abbot in this valley will be represented with the presence of the serpari, carrying snakes around their necks: a woman with an infant, the husband, a woodcarver, behind, have lunch together in the wood, then the husband leaves. The wolf takes away the child, the woman cries and together with her husband prays San Domenico, the wolf comes back and puts the child into its cot again.

Now in her eighties, Elisa Springer is one of the last Holocaust survivors still living in Italy. She will present her book "Il silenzio dei vivi" on her Auschwitz experience.