When teams of runners careen through the streets of Jessup on Saturday for St. Ubaldo Day’s iconic Corsa dei Ceri, they weren’t just carrying their saints, they were carrying pieces of Gubbio. In a tradition observed only in Jessup and Gubbio, Italy, runners, or ceraioli, carry statues of St. Ubaldo, St. Anthony and St. George perched atop tall, wooden, candlelike pillars called a cero, as they navigate through the hilly streets of Jessup for La Corsa dei Ceri.
With the Family of St. George unveiling last month a new, roughly 6-foot-tall cero handcrafted in Gubbio, all three families will be using statues and saints made in Gubbio, said Curt Camoni, a board member with the Family of St. George who has been running in the Race of the Saints since 2001 — a year after the tradition was revived in Jessup. Gubbio is Jessup’s sister city.
