Rome in the time of Covid lockdown – March 2020
Following the decree of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of 9 March 2020 on measures to contain Coronavirus (Covid 19), important prohibitions have been placed on the population, such as the ban on leaving home except for reasons of necessity and the closure of all the commercial activities considered not strictly necessary.
The city has turned into a ghost town, where the only sound is the typical silence of absence. Streets, squares and crossroads have become new places, where the only noise is the chirping of birds or the beating of a few passers-by’s shoes on the ground. Or the playful scream of a child in the distance.
In this new guise, Rome forgets the chaos, the smog, the constant chatter of the tourists who continuously overwhelm it and snatch the solemnity that only silence can restore. It becomes a “different” place from what we know. Those streets of Rome, which have always been represented as the very idea of the Eternal City, pulsating and noisy, popular and chic at the same time, are now immersed in a silence so unusual and bizarre. A rare and unknown sensation that has the power to catch us unprepared.
Stripped of its usual identity, Rome seems to become an ordinary city, somewhere in the world.
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