Gubbio and the Art of Collective Surrender

A Race That Is Not Allowed to Be Called a Race

On 15 May, the medieval town of Gubbio turns into something that is difficult to capture in a single word.

Three enormous wooden structures, the Ceri, each nearly four metres high and strikingly slender, are carried through the town by groups of men and then raced at full speed up the steep slope toward the basilica on top of Monte Ingino. At the top of each Cero stands a saint. Officially, the day is about devotion, tradition and honour, but there is more to it than that.

Anyone who finds themselves in the middle of it soon senses a second layer running beneath the surface, one that is never formally announced and yet is palpable everywhere.

The tension lies not only in the day itself, but in everything that precedes it. In the weeks and months of practice, during which the ceraioli synchronise their steps, search for the right rhythm, and gradually accustom their bodies to a weight that is not merely physical. They run, repeat, correct and begin again. Not because they have to, but because that is simply how it is done.

These are not men carrying something at random. These are neighbourhoods, families, and a history that refuses to be interrupted.

Three groups, each identified by its colour and its saint:

• Yellow for Sant’Ubaldo, the town’s patron saint, symbolising stability and connection
• Blue for San Giorgio, the dragon slayer, symbolising strength and courage
• Black for Sant’Antonio, protector of animals and the land, symbolising simplicity and care

The order is fixed, and so is the route. And yet there is a subtle friction in every movement. In the way they watch one another, in how they run just a little closer together than strictly necessary, in the fact that no one says aloud that it matters, while everyone behaves as if it does.

What is at stake cannot be named, but everyone feels it.

On the day itself, even the air changes. The smell of wood, warmed by hands and sunlight, mingles with sweat and wine, which is poured early and consumed without much ceremony. Not as an escape, but as preparation, as though the body must first loosen before it can surrender completely.

And thirst comes naturally. Not a mild thirst, but the kind that arises when, on a hot day, you run uphill behind the Ceri together with an exuberant crowd. You sweat, you pant, and halfway up you begin to wonder why you ever thought this was a sensible idea, yet you keep going.

Fortunately, at every bend there are carts and makeshift tables where, very practically, you cannot buy water, but you can buy wine, sold in plastic water bottles, no less. It is hot, you run yourself breathless, and so the wine is drunk as if it were water. Long gulps, without a second thought. In hindsight, an interesting concept. At the time, perfectly logical.

The voices swell and blur at the same time, dissolving into a hum in which words lose their meaning and make way for rhythm, for movement, for something you no longer need to understand in order to become part of it.

Those from Gubbio disappear a little into the whole that day. Not because they cease to exist, but because they are more fully present than ever. It is as if the boundary between individual and group temporarily dissolves and gives way to something collective that exists only as long as it is being carried.

Those from elsewhere always remain slightly at the edge. I stood there myself many years ago, together with my parents and two friends, at first quite neatly off to one side, assuming I was simply there to watch. Until the Ceri began to move. Without announcement and without any clear transition, the crowd started to flow, and before I knew it I was no longer standing beside it but right in the middle. I ran along behind the Ceri, swept up by something that seemed directionless and yet knew exactly where it was going.

The heat pressed against me, along with the sound of feet on stone, the pushing, the laughter, the voices blending into one great whole in which no one could be distinguished individually anymore. My breathing grew heavy, my legs began to protest, and somewhere halfway up I realised that stopping was no longer an option.

I reached the top utterly exhausted. And standing there, half spent and fully present, I knew one thing with certainty: this was not a moment you understand. It was a moment you surrender to and, above all, feel.

When the Ceri move, everything tilts. The tension that has been building finds its release in a sudden and powerful acceleration. Bodies push off, hands correct, shoulders absorb the weight. What at first seemed controlled turns into a movement that is both chaotic and astonishingly precise.

And somewhere within it all, there is a constant measuring. Not openly, not explicitly, but unmistakably present. In who runs in front, in how closely they keep together, in that single moment when it becomes clear who is leading without anyone needing to say so.

Beneath the religious layer lies something else. Long before saints took their places on these wooden, portable structures, life here revolved around fertility, the cycles of the land, and the necessity of the earth continuing to provide. The tall and unmistakably expressive shape of the Ceri has led some to interpret them as echoes of older, possibly phallic symbols. Not an established fact, but an idea that lingers because it touches something that feels remarkably plausible.

With the arrival of Christianity, the story changed, but the body did not. That is probably precisely why it still works.

In Northern Europe, we have grown accustomed to distance, to the idea that we must first understand before we participate, that everything requires a structure, a goal and an outcome.

Here, there is room for something else. For intensity, for surrender, for a form of involvement that asks not for explanation but for presence.

This is what the Ceri reveal. Not that nothing is at stake, but that so much is at stake that it no longer needs a name.

That there are moments in which you are no longer concerned with winning or losing, but with becoming part of something larger than yourself.

And that within that surrender, somewhere between wood, wine, sweat and ancient rhythms and traditions, lies a form of meaning that cannot be planned, only experienced.