The serpentone or snake is a traditional Christmas delicacy from Capena. It was invented by Forno Francellini, a bakery business that was first established in 1926 and has gone from strength to strength. Now the firm occupies a site just out of town on the left as you drive out of Capena on the Via Provinciale. It’s well worth stopping there to buy bread, cakes, pizza slices and so on because it’s easy to park outside and the quality is excellent. Francellini’s has an good website www.francellini.it, with interesting old photos and pictures of other specialities made to celebrate other feast days, such as the Sposatella and Lepiricchio. These buscuits are carried by children in a procession to mark the Feast of St Mark the Evangelist on 25 April.

The serpentone itself is so important that it has its own website in Italian and English – www.serpentone.it. Its skin is made out of flour, white wine, olive oil, sugar and eggs. The filling is made out of Roman hazelnuts, almonds, sugar, bitter chocolate and ‘a secret mixture of natural flavours’… It has apparently been made ‘since the oldest times’ but the present-day Il Serpentone^®  is most definitely a Fancellini product…