Candles running in Gubbio

The religious and folk festival par excellence. A historic village, thousands of people, thronged the streets and overwhelming rush. An experience, to do at least once in lifetime.

They cried all in Gubbio on May 16, 1160.Wept even the walls, the very ones that the bishop Ubaldo had helped to rebuild after a fire in 1126. The community was all there in honor of the man who for years had defense, stopping even the expulsion of Barbarossa, the city.From that day, the people of Gubbio did not stop more than remember. Every year on May 15, the community in mystical procession along the streets of the town carrying sticks of wax, to the basilica built on Mount Ingino, which still holds the remains of the saint.The candles, becoming more impressive, in the sixteenth century were replaced with three gigantic wooden structures (weighing about four tons each) surmounted by statues of St. Ubaldo, St. George and St. Anthony, who with several restorations still survive our days.Today's devotion to St. Ubaldo is still alive, and the ancient procession in his honor has become for years now in a rousing party, a wild ride where ceraioli carry on their shoulders the candles (mounted on stretchers) along the typical streets of the old town to the summit of Mount Ingino.On the feast day, start with the procession of the saints, and to separate the Candles, the procession until the race itself the adrenaline and tension burst into the city. People crowding the city is plagued by the enthusiasm that becomes uncontrollable. A day of ordinary madness! A day in which each of us at least once in life should attend.Despite the party will face back to the death of the bishop Ubaldo, many scholars see in it profane elements linked to the ancient rites iguvini described in the Tables of Gubbio unearthed in 1444.