The feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, patron of Venice, falls on 25 April. The main celebrations are in the basilica: the solemn Mass in the morning and Vespers in the late afternoon, both presided over by the Patriarch. In the days of the Serenissima a procession set off from Piazza San Marco with the highest civil and religious authorities of the Republic, and two more days were dedicated to the saint: 31 January, remembering the translation of his relics to Venice, and 25 June, the day in 1094 when the place where they had been hidden was found.
25 April is also the day of the bòcolo: a centuries-old tradition has sweethearts and wives given a red rosebud as a token of love. The legend tells of Maria, daughter of Doge Angelo Partecipazio, and of young Tancredi, who went to fight the Arabs in Spain with Charlemagne's army to overcome the doge's opposition to the marriage, and fell in battle, bleeding, on a rosebush.
Since 25 April is also the anniversary of the Liberation, so as not to lose the holiday the city moved the patron's local public holiday to 21 November, the feast of the Madonna della Salute, which marks the end of the plague of 1630.
