The beautiful Umbrian fortress town of Gubbio, which seems caught in a pre-Renaissance time warp, normally celebrates La Festa dei Ceri in mid-May – we look forward to next year! It’s a dizzying fusion of gaiety and religious devotion, and an unusual race with a preordained outcome.

The ceri or “candlesticks” are three gigantic wooden structures over twenty feet tall and weigh about 900 pounds, built out of octagonal sections so that they look almost like chess pieces. Each is crowned with carvings of saints Ubaldo, Giorgio, and Antonio who, respectively, protect masons, merchants, and farmers. Costumed throngs of locals — garbed in the dedicated color for each of the saints (yellow for Ubaldo, blue for Giorgio, and black for Antonio) — party in the narrow streets and piazzas in anticipation of the ritual afternoon race of the saints.

With a roar from the multitude, the ceri are hoisted up by teams of local young men who haul the giant pedestals along the Corsa dei Ceri at running speed to the top of Mount Ingino. Though always exciting, the ritual race is not one you want to bet on: St. Ubaldo, the town’s patron, wins every time. This heralds a year of good fortune for the town.

The festival inspires such passion among people of the region and their descendants that homesick Italian soldiers enacted it within the bloody landscape of World War II. And in the United States, Jessup, Pennsylvania, just outside of Scranton, performs a nearly identical “Running of the Saints” to celebrate St. Ubaldo’s Day on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend (also postponed until 2021).

Photos courtesy of Frank Yantorno, artist, photographer and Ciclismo Classico guide who lives outside of Bolzano.

Venice is a city of surprises, filled with contrasts and apparent contradictions that, somehow, fluidly coexist. It is a city of water and of stone, the most pliant and most solid of natural substances. For much of its history Venice has been guided by BOTH church & state and by both honor & profit. And, like the Roman god Janus, Venice has always faced in two directions at the same time: to the West and to the East.

But most improbable of all is Venice’s amazing historic arc . . . over a millennium Venice went from a marshy hideaway for refugees to one of the greatest economic and political powers in the world.

Whenever I visit La Serenissima and revel in the architectural confection of St. Mark’s Basilica and the Gothic grandeur of the Doge’s Palace I am reminded of the twin pillars upon which Venice built its improbable success: an unwavering faith in a higher being and a more earth-bound faith in the ingenuity and resourcefulness of its fellow Venetians to navigate and triumph in a challenging world.

Venice and all of Italy will bounce back and once again astonish and delight us all.

Andra! Tutto Bene!!

“This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and the spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.”

Mark Twain Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1892

“You will begin to wonder what human daring ever achieved anything so magnificent.”

John Ruskin, Mornings in Florence 1875

Florence, and all of Italy, the world’s prayers are with you.

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