🌑Calcata, between divine relics and rebellious spirits: Stories, Legends and Curiosities of the witches' village

Giano di Vico
May 19
3 min read

Calcata stands on top of a tuff spur, nestled between wild gorges and silences as thick as stone.

Whoever enters, feels it immediately: this is not a village. It is an enchantment.

Calcata is one of the most enigmatic places in Tuscia. While elsewhere history is read in books, here it is breathed under the skin . Every alley is a threshold, every door seems to hide a spell. And in fact... they are not just impressions.

Here are the most incredible stories, forgotten legends and oddities that make Calcata a village out of time — and perhaps even out of space.

✝️ The Holy Foreskin: The Most Controversial Relic in Christianity

It is not legend, it is documented history: for centuries, in the church of the Santissimo Nome di Gesù in Calcata one of the most discussed relics of Christianity was kept: the Holy Foreskin of Jesus .

According to tradition, it was brought to Calcata in the Middle Ages by a crusader soldier. Kept in a golden shrine, it attracted pilgrims and mysteries . Some claimed it had miraculous powers. Others considered it a relic too scandalous to be true.

In 1983, the relic mysteriously disappeared . Officially “stolen”. But some say it was made to disappear by the Vatican , to avoid theological embarrassment.

Since then, on certain days of the year, some swear they hear Gregorian chants coming from the crypt , even if the church is closed.

🧙♀️ Calcata, the village of witches

The old women still tell it, with a low voice and eyes that look elsewhere: “There have always been witches here” .

A legend tells of a witch called Nencia , who lived on the outskirts of the village and prepared potions to cure or curse, depending on the intentions of those who sought her. No one ever saw her die. It is said that she disappeared during a windy night , leaving only a circle of blackened stones in her garden.

Even today, that spot is avoided by those who know the story. Even the cats of the village, it is said, never pass over it.

🕯️ 1930s: The Abandoned Town That Didn't Want to Die

In 1935, Calcata was declared unsafe by the fascist government. The inhabitants were forced to move to the “new center” downstream. The houses emptied, the windows went out, and silence fell on the village like a shroud.

But Calcata did not let itself be buried .

Starting in the 60s, artists, poets, musicians, sculptors, hermits, dreamers began to arrive . People fleeing from the normal world. People who felt a different vibration in that place.

Shops, laboratories, improvised theaters, communities were born . Today, Calcata is an alternative microcosm where spirituality and psychedelia, gospel and tarot, painting and witchcraft coexist.

🌒 The oddities that cannot be explained (and do not want to be explained)

The houses seem to change shape. Residents swear that some walls grow longer or shorter as the years go by.
The streets are an esoteric labyrinth. Traced according to mysterious geometries, according to some they follow ancient energy lines .
On certain nights, in the gorges of the Treja, you can hear songs in unknown languages , accompanied by drums. No one has ever found the source.
Calcata is also famous for its high concentration of cats , who seem to possess an invisible map of the village and… its secrets.