The Redentore Feast-day, one of the oldest Venetian popular festivities, is celebrated every year during the third weekend in July: continuing a rite which has been repeated for 400 years, this festivity, the best loved and most deeply felt by the Venetians, sees hundreds of boats gather in St. Mark's Basin to await and admire the midnight fireworks. The story goes that after three years of a terrible plague epidemic, the doge Sebastiano Venier had a temple of thanksgiving to the redeemer erected on the island of Giudecca. The task was entrusted to Palladio, who laid the first stone in 1579: it was consecrated in 1592. On 21 July 1578, however, an open-air altar was made in the place where the temple would be built, and in 4 days a bridge formed by 80 galleys spanned the Giudecca canal. A huge crowd of Venetians crossed over it and 4 centuries later, the feast of the Redeemer continues to be held in the same places and in the same ways. The city is united by a bridge mounted on modern floating platforms spanning the Giudecca canal.