Before the pandemic, visiting a place like Florence could be quite an adventure: queues, online bookings – something Italians weren’t, back then, too fond of – school trips, crowds everywhere, people taking pictures at every corner. Honestly, if you wanted to relax, chances were it wasn’t going to happen.

Then, Covid-19 came and our cities turned, for almost one year, into silent vestiges to art and to the past.  I know many disliked those images showing our Venice,  our Rome, our Florence empty, but I found them somehow charming and sobering, the way they remained so incredibly beautiful in spite of tragedy. The way their essence didn’t really depend on our presence.