Rome, a city under construction for the Jubilee

For over a year, visitors to Rome have been surprised — even disappointed — to find the city mired in construction. Streets clogged with traffic, facades hidden behind scaffolding, workers swarming around in hard hats and overalls, monuments obscured by signs... The purpose of this tumultuous and frustrating jumble is to refresh the Eternal City, preparing it for the Jubilee of 2025, which should see millions of pilgrims flock here. 

“The city is getting ready to offer an even more beautiful face than Rome already has, and little by little the building sites that have tested everyone's patience in recent months will disappear.” At a press conference less than two months before the opening of Jubilee 2025 (which is on December 24), Archbishop Rino Fisichella, co-prefect of the dicastery for Evangelization, organizer of the event, gave a voice to the expectation and weariness of many Romans and tourists.

For over a year now, the Eternal City has been full of open-air construction sites. Scaffolding, concrete mixers, cables, chisels, and heaped-up rubble bags have invaded the squares, spilling over onto the sidewalks, pushing pedestrians back, holding up scooters and mopeds, reducing tracks at stations, and strangling galleries. Bus and cab drivers' journeys have become an obstacle course, as Rome has turned into a jungle of detours, blocked roads, and narrowed lanes.

The construction industry has been enriched by this tangle, but the daily lives of local residents have been invaded by the constant chatter of jackhammers.

“What a disaster,” we hear at the bar counters, around the steaming coffees of the regulars. A Dutch tourist passing through for a few days with his 20-year-old daughter expressed his surprise. “You can't see a single monument! Yesterday we passed through Piazza Navona, and even there, there were only large signs warning of the construction work.”

The large cranes in Piazza Pia were the talk of the town. The completion of this construction site has been eagerly awaited. It involves the construction of a tunnel for cars, which will now allow pedestrians to pass from Castel Sant'Angelo to the Via della Conciliazione without having to cross one of the city's busiest thoroughfares, the “Lungotevere”—“along the Tiber,” in Italian. This is the most ambitious project launched for the Jubilee, costing the Italian authorities 85 million euros (about 92 million dollars).

The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Matteo Salvini, announced on July 17 that the tunnel would be completed before Christmas. The work seems to be on schedule, but this is not the case for all the city's construction sites. On September 25, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Jubilee's main coordinator, publicly expressed his annoyance at the absence of workers on another major site, Piazza del Risorgimento.

Piazza del Risorgimento lies by the Leonine Walls in the northeast of the Vatican. And, it's one of the main thoroughfares for many pilgrims wishing to reach the Vatican by metro or bus. Both the square and the Via Traspontina, which serves as a detour for the Piazza Pia construction, are permanently jammed — much to the displeasure of Romans, not known for their patience with cars.

This situation has a direct impact on Vatican employees. They find it extremely difficult to reach the Porta Sant'Anna, one of the busiest entrances to the small state, by car. In response to this problem, the Vatican authorities will open a new gate on November 4. Opening directly onto Piazza del Risorgimento, it should facilitate access to the Vatican for motorized employees.

The small state, hidden behind the Leonine Walls, has not been spared construction work. Like Rome, it’s suffering as it awaits a new lease of life. It's a wait that has now “become feverish,” agreed Archbishop Fisichella.