Transportation of the “Macchina di Santa Rosa.” The transportation of the “Macchina di Santa Rosa” (Machine of Saint Rose) takes place in the town of Viterbo, roughly sixty miles to the north of Rome, every September 3rd, to celebrate the town’s patron saint, Saint Rose. Passionately followed and eagerley awaited by the Viterbesi, the people of Viterbo, the proccession dates from 1258 when, after dreaming about the saint for three successive nights, Pope Alexander IV had her body transferred to the present day Santuary of Saint Rose from the church of Santa Maria in Poggio. Ever since, in order to commemorate this event a machine (the traditional definition is the “walking bell tower”) has been carried though Viterbo on the eve of her feast day. Throughout the centuries it has increased in size until reaching its present limit of 28 metres in height and 5 metric tonnes in weight. The real motor of this “machine” is in fact the muscle power of the hundred or so “facchini:” the men who carry it on their backs and shoulders for a kilometer and 200 meters through the darkened, cobble-stoned streets of the medieval town centre. The machine, adorned with around eight thousand tiny electric lights and hundreds of candles reaches above the tops of the houses; and as the “facchini” pass by with their swaying load they are roaringly cheered on my the ecstatic crowd. A new machine takes the place of the old one every five years. The present machine,“Fiori dal Cielo” (Flowers from Heaven) took over from the previous “Ali di Luce” (Wings of Light) in 2009.