The lanterns are deliberately simple and homemade: colored paper stretched over a light frame, with a candle burning inside, and carried at the end of a long cane. On the evening of September 7, thousands of Florentine children parade them through the streets toward Piazza Santissima Annunziata, singing as they go. The date is significant, since it falls on the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin, whose feast is celebrated at the church that marks the end of the procession.
The tradition recalls an older journey into the city, the one that, from the seventeenth century, country people from the Mugello, Chianti, Casentino and the mountains above Pistoia would take, often during the night, to reach the fair held at Santissima Annunziata on September 8.
