Reopened culture sites delight Italians and, before too long they hope, tourists

ROME－Museums and cultural sites reopened this week in most of Italy with pomp and circumstance－along with new health-monitoring protocols after coronavirus restrictions were eased.

The only thing missing were the tourists.

The first visitors to Rome's Colosseum when it opened on Monday morning were treated to a performance of Giacomo Puccini's famed opera La Boheme, performed by students from Rome's Sant Cecilia Conservatory.

Alfonsina Russo, director of the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo, was on hand as the doors swung open, saying for her it was "a joy to finally reopen the site to the public".

Visitors had to pass through specially-installed heat sensors designed to detect anyone entering with unusually high body temperatures.

Visitors were kept a safe distance from each other while inside and there were multiple stations with hand sanitizers available for passersby.

Crowds were modest in size. In pre-pandemic times, long lines of visitors sometimes waited hours to enter the Colosseum.

"It's definitely not the same as it used to be," Anna Luisa Cattaneo, a 33-year-old unemployed server, said in alluding to the health checks, social distancing rules, and small crowd.

"But none of it really matters to me right now. I used to come here on crowded school trips and now I'm back in the middle of a pandemic and it feels so wonderful to be able to do something 'normal'. It almost made me cry to come here."

There were few big crowds when cultural touchstones around Italy reopened. Local newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported there was a long line waiting to enter Turin's famous Egyptian Museum when it opened on Monday.

Florence's Uffizi Gallery attracted an average of nearly 8,000 visitors a day in 2019 before the pandemic struck, data firm Statista said. When it opened this year, just 776 tickets were sold the first day. The historic site of Pompeii, an ancient Roman city destroyed by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in AD 79, drew just 175 visitors, compared to the nearly 9,000 daily before COVID-19 hit.

Health concerns

There were several factors behind the low visitor numbers, media reports said. They range from economic hardship to health worries to the fact that tickets have to be bought ahead of time online. The biggest factor though was the lack of tourists due to coronavirus fears and international travel restrictions.

At four different cultural sites in Rome, the nearly two dozen tourists were residents of the city. Officials working at the sites said they could not recall more than a small handful of visitors who stuck out as being from abroad or even from other parts of Italy.

Those who ventured out to enjoy Italy's vast number of cultural sites said all the issues in the background could not detract from the joy of their experience.

"Just look at this, look at it," said Antonia Caputo, an office manager who has been working almost exclusively from home since May.

The 51-year-old was gesturing at the majestic Fountain of the Four Rivers made by Renaissance sculpture Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the center of Rome's Piazza Navona.

"Every time you look at something like this, you forget everything else," she said.

Marco Pellegrino, a 40-year-old bank employee who has been working only one day a week since the crisis began, said being able to go out and enjoy some of his city's history helped him look at the challenges facing Italy in a new way.

Pellegrino had just exited the Imperial Roman Forum, the ruins of what had once been the heart of ancient Rome.

"It's easy to feel down about everything that's happened, but you look at all this and you see what the city has been through," he said.

"Rome has been sacked and suffered through plagues and natural disasters and foreign occupations. We made it through all that and we'll make it through the coronavirus as well."

Xinhua