TRASPORTO DELLA MACCHINA DI SANTA ROSA VITERBO Italy Every year, on the 3th of September, in the evening, Viterbo celebrates with pride its Patron Saint Santa Rosa , with a unique worldwide exhibition  . The“Macchina of Santa Rosa”  is a tower illuminated  by torches and electric lights, about thirty meters high and five tons of weight.  The machine is lifted and carried in procession on shoulders by a hundred men called “Facchini of Santa Rosa” along a route of about one kilometer , articulated through the streets, sometimes very narrow and the squares of the city centre. During the  transportation, followed by  tens of thousands of people, the streets affected are darkened to bring out the machine light. The transportation  symbolically revokes  the transfer of Santa Rosa’s body, made in Viterbo on 1258 from  Pope Alexander IV’s disposition, from the Church of Santa Maria in Poggio (called Crocetta) to the Church of Santa Maria delle Rose (now Santa Rosa’s sanctuary). The Festival makes part of the network of big Italian machines carried on shoulders. From the 2013,  it has been incorporated into the oral and intangible heritage of the  humanity by the UNESCO.   Ogni anno, la sera del 3 […]