A month out from the Church’s 2025 Jubilee celebrations, much of the city of Rome remains a building site. Source: ABC News.
Key monuments are hidden by scaffolding, while statues are covered with plastic sheeting as the city undergoes a facelift.
There were 249 construction plans set out for the Jubilee celebrations, and as of November 7, 105 were complete.
Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri said the works are on track and that “all the main targets and milestones have been met”.
The Italian capital is expected to see the arrival of 33 million people in 2025 for the jubilee, a year of pilgrimage declared by Pope Francis.
It is an opportunity for pilgrimage and prayer organised roughly every 25 years by the Catholic Church, but some locals feel that the construction work has been a “disaster”.
Concerns are growing about how an already crowded city will cope with millions more visitors.
“It’s a disaster, all of Rome,” lamented Tiziana Renzetti, a local resident stuck in traffic earlier this week. “The Jubilee … I don’t even want to think about it!”
Taxi driver Marco Palmigiani said he expected the traffic to get much worse. “Rome will explode,” he said.
With just a month to go until Pope Francis launches proceedings by opening the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica on December 24, the preparations seem far from complete.
Traffic jams – already endemic in a city where the car is king – form between diversions, the beeping of horns adding to the din.
Dotted among the construction sites, a small army of specialists clean marbled statues and monuments sheathed in boards or plastic sheeting.
Many visitors have posted online photos of the disruption, noting how it contrasts sharply with the expectations of a trip to Rome.
“It’s weird to see a city totally under construction,” Clara Jay, 20, said during a visit to the Trevi Fountain, where a walkway has been installed over the Baroque masterpiece and the waters stopped while it is cleaned.
Some key sites would be ready and open as normal within weeks, Rome authorities stressed.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s lead organiser of the jubilee, said “the city has readied itself to offer an even more beautiful face”.
“And little by little we will see the construction sites, which have tested everyone’s patience for months, disappear.”
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Tourists ‘disappointed’ as much of Rome under construction in preparation for Pope’s 2025 Jubilee (AFP via ABC News)
