Coronavirus: Rush hour in Venice

There is a haunting beauty but death to the city with the tourists gone and so many of the locals fleeing to the mountains. I noticed today something that surely isn’t new - but the canals were too busy for me to notice in the past. The windows on the Palazzo Salviati opposite my vaporetto stop are broken. It just felt like a premonition of times to come - and I had flash to the streets of New York when Will Smith played in “I am Legend” and was the last remaining human survivor of the plague. Rush hour is quiet but there is a beauty. Children were playing soccer in my Campo. Two University Students on the Zattera with no classes to go to were lingering in a sunny doorway reading. From an Altana near Campo Santo Angelo came the crying lyrics of an opera singer singing to himself. In many ways the Venetians have reclaimed the city. But I see worry on people’s faces. Maybe it’s time to close my shop. Or move to Milan. Move abroad. There are jobs in Berlin. Or London. It’s possibly the best time you can ever visit Venice for you’ll have the city to yourself. A fantasy in the height of summer but now somehow a tragedy.