The feast of Sant’ Agnese, celebrated on January 21, is one of Rome’s oldest religious commemorations and remains closely tied to the city’s early Christian history. Agnes was a young Roman girl, traditionally believed to have been martyred in the early 4th century during the persecutions under Emperor Diocletian.
According to early sources, she was executed for refusing to renounce her Christian faith and for rejecting a forced marriage, making her one of the most powerful symbols of female martyrdom in Christian tradition. The center of the Roman celebrations is the Basilica of Sant’ Agnese fuori le Mura, built over the site traditionally identified as Agnes’s burial place along the Via Nomentana.
