The story starts in 1575, when — as tradition has it — the Madonna granted the townspeople an «audience» and freed Sambuca from the plague. Ever since, on the third Sunday of May, the statue sculpted by Antonello Gagini in the early 1500s is lowered from its altar in the afternoon; the procession sets off at nine in the evening and winds on almost until Monday's dawn, pausing beneath eleven «crowns» put up by the town's quarters.
The bearers are confraternity members in silk-and-gold embroidered costume, and the crowd answers with chants handed down for generations; fireworks mark the statue's return. Around the religious core runs a good week of concerts, shows and side events such as the Palio dell'Udienza horse spectacle — the 2026 edition, the 451st, filled the days from 8 to 18 May.
There are longer rhythms too: every five years an August procession carries the Madonna to the Trasferimento quarter, and once a decade a second route, on the Tuesday after the feast, crosses the Infermeria, the neighbourhood the statue first passed through in plague times.
