Piazza del Duomo - Easter Saturday (March)

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In Florence, every year, on Easter Saturday the Holy Fire was sparked off by using same stone chippings from the Holy Speulchre, and it was customary to use it to rekindle the flame of all the hearths in the town.

Successively the Ceremony became symbolical, as today when on Easter Sunday a great Chariot which goes back to the eighteenth century, is drawn by white oxen festooned with garlands, from where it is kept at Porta a Prato to the Cathedral Square. A steel wire connects it to the High Altar in the Cathedral.

During Midday Mass when the time cames for the Gloria in Excelsis the Cardinal Archbishop lights a rocket in the form of a dove with the holy fire obtained by means of the ancinent chippings. The rocket shooys away down the wire to the Chariot stuffed full with firecrackers, which thus explodes to the great joy of the onlookers.