There was a beautiful sunset tonight. I was crossing the Ponte Sisto with a few bits of recycling and quite a crowd had stopped, leaning against the wall, to take in the view up the river to the dome of St Peter’s. Nothing so unusual in that except that usually this crowd would be tourists, perhaps a tour group with matching brightly coloured earpieces and a guide, a group to be pushed past and resented for clogging up the way. But tonight it was a crowd of locals: the bloke from up my street was there sat on the wall with his dog beneath him. This was Romans taking time to enjoy their city.
Rome is now in the third phase of lockdown, and the fourth is only days away. From 4th May people were allowed to return to work and to visit their relatives. On 18th May gatherings of friends were permitted and shops and barbers’ shops reopened. Next week travel between regions will become possible and there will be no more quarantine for visitors from abroad.
It is fair to say that many of these steps have been anticipated. A few nights before the 17th I was in my sitting room with the windows open because though it was dark it was still warm. It was then I became conscious of a sound I hadn’t heard for weeks: the hubbub of chatter with the soft music of a cocktail bar somewhere underneath. Despite the soldiers and police outside Palazzo Farnese, the French embassy, the wine bar Camponeschi was serving drinks and patrons were standing (no seats or tables had yet reappeared) drinking in the square. Since then the squares in the centre have gradually been filling with people and the familiar sounds of nightlife. Going through Trastevere for my shopping I pass Bar San Callisto and Piazza San Cosimato, both thronged. Rome is in a state of normality with masks. A teenager heading towards Piazza San Callisto did the classic Italian thing before rendezvousing with friends of ducking in between parked cars to check his looks in the mirror of a vespa despite the fact that half of his face was covered with a surgical mask.
Of course the worry is that despite the staging of the ease-off in phases, the relaxation has been too quick and a second spike will hit us, particularly in those regions like Lazio that this far have escaped with relatively low cases. But the pressure to re-open is economic and the owners of small businesses are getting desperate. Economic stagnation is illustrated in one strange feature of post-lockdown life: almost all the buildings covered with scaffolding have had their advertising removed. The same lack of advertising is true of the buses. It’s a gap, but not a totally unwelcome one, that in this post-lockdown world we are not taking every opportunity to sell each other things.
Romans are enjoying Rome with no tourists and few foreigners. As summer approaches there are plusses and minuses. Among the minuses: the heat turns up the volume on the smells, and two predominantly. It is also the time of the scirocco, the southerly wind that brings Saharan sand in big jaundiced rain clouds and leaves all the cars filthy as if they have been long abandoned. Among the plusses, the weather is mostly warm and sunny without yet being oppressively hot. Trees and creepers are in their all too brief time of blossom: red bougainvillea and heavily scented jasmine, which mercifully takes the edge off the other smells.
With the easing of lockdown I’ve been running along the river again. The first morning that exercise outside was allowed I crept down the steps to the river bank still unsure that this was no longer off limits. Soon I encountered others who had made the same tentative journey. We smiled, nodded or gave discreet thumbs-up sign to each other, joggers who were familiar but who hadn’t before acknowledged one another. It was good to be back. And the river is more alive than I have known it. Two days ago I saw what looked like a pair of otters swimming and diving. Sadly they are more likely to be coypu, a South American invader originally brought to Europe and bred for fur which then escaped and thrived like the parakeets in the trees. But native wildlife is flourishing, too. Fish are literally jumping; big pinkish fish, and sometimes they are visible in the water splashing among the shallow reed beds. Fishermen now line the river banks trying to catch them.
It is good to be enjoying the city which feels rejuvenated. Italy is desperate to get the tourists back to stimulate an economic recovery, and from next week they will start to come, but for now it’s great to eat in restaurants surrounded only by locals, and to walk the streets without that particular invasive species.
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