Rome: Eternal City, Empty City
Impressions of Rome on my first journey after the lockdown
When in September 2019 I began a year-long vacation, I had grand plans: I was going to live in India to do volunteer work for an NGO, then I was going to travel to a bunch of places I hadn’t been before, in Asia and in South America.
Well, I got to go and work in India (see my series of Medium articles about my experiences there), but then of course Covid happened. My stay in India was cut short, and found myself back home in Berlin, locked-down like everyone else, and unable to travel.
When in mid-June the European foreign ministers announced that travelling within the EU would be permitted again, I booked then and there a flight to Rome. I had been to Rome multiple times before – and in fact penned a photographic love letter to it about a year ago – but if there was one place I was longing to see again, it was Italy.
My flight later got cancelled, but trains were operating, and after a fifteen hour train ride (Berlin-Munich-Bologna-Rome), I was finally back in the city I was so fond of, on 2 July. And I found… an almost empty city. No city is ever fully empty, of course (except maybe during lockdowns), but compared to previous years, it was. Gone were the crowds on popular places like Piazza del Popolo, depicted above, the Piazza Navona (see below) or the Spanish Stairs; gone also the endless queues outside the Colosseum. The Forum Romanum was a ghost town, with maybe a handful of people wandering through the ruins of what used to be the heart of the Roman Empire.
The locals of course enjoyed the lifting of the lockdown. The terraces of restaurants and cafés were well frequented (with tables placed at an appropriate distance from each other), and shopping streets could get somewhat crowded.
Shops, museums and restaurants were open, but the wearing of masks and social distancing was strictly enforced. In fact, I was very much impressed how serious Italians took these measures. Indoors, everyone wore a mask (well, you always have exceptions of course, some people lazily wore the mask under their chins, but they were far and few between), and even outdoors a lot of people put on masks.
It took some getting used to, seeing Rome in this new light. It was, on the one hand, very relaxing and calming; but there was also a constant reminder that a pandemic was going on, and even with all the precautions taken, there was still a sense of unease prevailing. However, at the end of the day, I couldn’t have hoped for a better place to start travelling again.
Below then is a selection of photos which I took of the almost empty Eternal City. All photos were taken with a Fujifilm X-T20 camera and an iPhone.
I took some additional photos in what is my favourite part of Rome, which I will publish in a future article. From Rome I travelled to the South of Italy, to Puglia, which I will also showcase in future articles.
