Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 36: Italy

There is no shortage of Easter celebrations in Italy, spurred on by its regional nature and being the home of the modern Catholic church.  But my favorite may be the most explosive: the Scoppio del Carro, or Explosion of the Cart.

The story starts about a thousand years ago, during the Crusades. The son of a prominent Florentine family is in Jerusalem, and is the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem and raise the crusaders' banner. To honor his bravery, the young man is given three flints out of the Holy Sepulchre. The young man brings his relics back to Florence, where they are invested in a local church. The Easter tradition soon starts that a torch is lit by these flints, and the torch is used to light candles around the city.

At some point, the torch is replaced by a large candle on a cart, and later still that candle is replaced by fireworks, which are still the focus of the tradition today.

The modern procession starts at the church that houses the flints. They're used to light the "holy fire" (now typically some coals), which is put on the cart along with the fireworks. The cart, pulled by two white oxen garlanded with flowers, goes through the city and stops in the square outside the cathedral. A wire is strung between the cart and the altar in the cathedral, where a dove (representing the Holy Spirit) loaded with its own rockets awaits. At a specific point in the mass, one of the celebrants lights the dove (using a flame started by the holy fire), and if all goes to plan it shoots along its wire and into the fireworks, setting them off in a loud and colorful display.