May 1st, 2020. Florentines sit in the sun the "Piazza Pitti" square in Florence to pump up their vitamin D levels after nearly two months of segregation in their homes.
The Florentines are back. After two months of forced segregation because of the COVID-19 epidemics, the regional government issued an "ordinanza" allowing people to walk free in the streets of their town. They are still ordered to wear face masks and groups are forbidden, but it seems that it is past the time when you were insulted from the windows if you were seen walking in the street, or reported to the police by your neighbors if they saw you leaving home more than once per day.
Now, Florentines can walk in the sun again. And that's what they did on this sunny weekend in May.
The result was eerie and disconcerting. There was a definite sense of "zombie movie" in the masked people cautiously exploring the streets, looking at each other as if asking, "are you a zombie, too?" It was a scene not unlike the photos of Tokyo or Hiroshima after the bombings of WW2, with the survivors walking aimlessly among ruins. Florence has not been bombed, of course, but, in a sense, it has been razed down like Hiroshima. It is in ruins in an economic sense.
All the shops are closed, so are hotels, museums, and offices. With the current rules of "social distancing," it is unthinkable that they will ever be able to reopen, they just can't make ends meet without their usual number of customers. And when will tourists come back to a ghost city? No shops, no tourists. And no tourists means, no money, no jobs, no income. And no shops. Those people walking along the street yesterday were economic zombies, and they knew that.
But, if it all happened, it was because it had to happen. Florence couldn't survive forever to the sheer pressure of the millions of tourists arriving every year, something had to give. The only surprise is how fast and abruptly it happened. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca said, "Growth is slow, but ruin is rapid"
Just to give you an idea of how things were, and expected to be as the norm, here is Florence's Piazza Duomo, last spring.
In the end, even zombies have hearts. And, like this old lady, they can sit on a bench, take off their face mask, and enjoy a quiet afternoon in the silence of the empty streets and the closed shops.
Afternoon in Piazza della Passera, Florence -- empty of the usual throngs of tourists. This lady looks British, but she is probably a Florentine.
