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The 'Race of the Candles' honors the venerated body of a saint from the 12th century.
There are two ways to make the climb up Gubbio’s Mt. Ingino to visit the Basilica of Saint Ubaldo. You can hike for 40 nearly-vertical minutes, or you can ride in the Funivia, a kind of cable car where the “car” looks like a human-size birdcage. However you make the trip, at the top the 16th-century basilica houses the mummified body of a 12th-century bishop named Ubaldo Baldassini. He is well-appointed in white robes and a high pointy mitre, jewel encrusted and laid out on a silk pillow. The body is encased in a crystal-walled sarcophagus placed on a tall altar, all backlit by an arched stained glass window.
