Italy is undergoing the biggest coronavirus outbreak outside Asia. And though the capital, Rome, is far from the epicenter in the north, its famed tourist sites are nearly empty.
— one of the city's top tourist attractions. It's eerily quiet, no one is sitting around the boat-shaped fountain, Fontana della Barcaccia. And nowhere to be seen are the exhausted but satisfied visitors, usually laden with shopping bags from nearby boutiques — Valentino, Armani or Prada.Art lovers wanting to gaze on some Caravaggio masterpieces find a sign saying the Saint Luigi dei Francesi church is closed.
"I'm not nervous about the virus at all," he says."But I'm worried about the fact that if they close down the borders, we're not going to be able to go home for like a year or so." "First they said there was no problem at all, then they went overboard, sending confusing, contradictory messages, creating a situation of total panic," Antonini says.
He holds the invoice for one of Rome's top five-star hotels — in the last two days, all it ordered was 11 pounds of potatoes. And in a city of some 900 churches, the Roman Catholic authorities have given priests specific directives. These include keeping holy water vessels empty to prevent worshippers from dipping their fingers into the water, and new instructions for taking Communion.
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