Easter Sunday: Scoppio del Carro (Explosion of the Cart)
Piazza del Duomo, 11 am. A parade through the streets of Florence {starting point Porta al Prato} begins at 9 am

Easter Sunday in Florence is marked by the Explosion of the Cart. Its history can be traced back to 1096, when a Florentine knight, a member of the Pazzi family, was the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The nobleman was rewarded with fragments of stone from the Holy Sepulcher. Upon his return to Florence, it became a family privilege to bring light to a darkened city on Holy Saturday evening by striking a flame with the blessed flints. Later, a cart was introduced  to carry torches symbolizing light and life to Florentine hearths.
Nowadays, the huge cart, minus the torches, is hauled to the square between the Baptistery and the Cathedral on Easter morning by a pair of white oxen decorated with flowers garlands. The cart has been rigged with an arsenal of fireworks and sparklers so that when a dove-shaped rocket {symbolizing the Holy Spirit} slides down a steel cable at full speed from the Cathedral altar {11 am} during Easter mass, it set off a ferocious dance of fire on impact, highlighted by a fluttering pinwheel. What is more significant is the flight of the dove: if it flies back, unhampered, the crowd cheers because this is a sign of good weather and good crops. If there is a hitch and the fireworks fail to explode immediately or at all, this is taken as a bad omen.

All taking place few steps from our Hotel Loggiato dei Serviti.