The patrons of Grado are Saints Hermagoras and Fortunatus, celebrated on 12 July. The community's most important religious tradition, however, is the Perdòn de Barbana, held on the morning of the first Sunday of July: a votive procession in which the statue of the Madonna degli Angeli crosses the lagoon with a cortege of boats decked with flowers, from the basilica of Sant'Eufemia to the island of Barbana and its Marian sanctuary.
That sanctuary was born in 582: a violent storm surge was threatening Grado, and Patriarch Elias, in thanks for the danger past, had a first church built on the spot where the waters had carried an image of the Madonna. Since then the place has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, but services have never stopped being held there.
