>Any 19th of September the city of Napoli celebrates his own Saint Patron. Saint Gennaro. Any year during the celebration the blood's Saint liquified. The blood is stored in two hermetically sealed small ampoules, held since the 17th century in a silver reliquary between two round glass plates. The larger ampoule, with capacity of about 60 ml and almond-shaped, is filled with a dark reddish substance. Separate reliquaries hold bone fragments believed to belong to Saint Gennaro. For most of the time, the ampoules are kept in a bank vault, whose keys are held by a commission of local notables, including the Mayor of Naples; while the bones are kept in a crypt under the main altar of Naples Cathedral. On feast days, all these relics are taken in procession from the cathedral to the Monastery of Santa Chiara, where the archbishop holds the reliquary up and tilts it to show that the contents are solid, and places it on the high altar next to the saint's other relics. After intense prayers by the faithful, including the so-called "relatives of Saint Januarius" (parenti di San Gennaro), the content of the larger vial typically liquefies. The archbishop then holds up the vial and tilts it again to demonstrate that liquefaction has taken place. The announcement of the liquefaction is greeted with a 21-gun salute at the 13th-century Castel Nuovo. The ampoules remain exposed on the altar for eight days, while the priests move or turn them periodically to show that the contents remain liquid. The liquefaction sometimes takes place almost immediately, but can take hours or even days. Records kept at the Duomo tell that on rare occasions the contents fail to liquefy. In the XX century twice the blood do not liquified, in 1944, year of the eruption of the Vesuvius Volcano and in the 1980 year of the heart quake in Napoli. This morning the blood liquified around 10:00 am.
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