The legend

The gesture is born from a LEGEND about the love story between Maria, daughter of Doge Orso I Partecipazio, and Tancredi, a young commoner. Maria, legendarily called “Vulcana”, saw her love for Tancredi opposed by her father, who was part of the noble and important Partecipazio family, and who could not accept her marriage with a common boy.
To get her father to accept her beloved, Maria convinced Tancredi to go and fight the Arabs in Spain, among the ranks of the leader Charlemagne.
Tancredi agreed and thus, moved by his love for Maria, fought with valor to a DUEL.
One day sometime later, some French knights, led by the paladin Orlando, arrived in Venice, they looked for Maria “Vulcana”, and brought her a frightful message: her beloved Tancredi had died in a Duel.
The man had stood out valiantly against the Saracen invaders, and fallen bleeding on a rose garden. With his last strength, Tancredi had plucked a rosebud handing it to his friend Orlando, with the request to bring it to Venice to his beloved Vulcana.
Maria received the rose in sad silence, and the next day she was found dead with the bloody flower encircled on her breast, exactly during the feast of St. Marcus, the city’s patron day. Since then, on the 25TH OF APRIL, it has been customary to give your BELOVED a RED rosebud, a symbol of PASSION and BLOOD, a “boccolo” as they call it in Venice.