The Duomo di Milano, the main cathedral in Milan, was closed on Monday until further notice amid a coronavirus outbreak in Italy. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
The Duomo di Milano, the main cathedral in Milan, was closed on Monday until further notice amid a coronavirus outbreak in Italy. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Milan, normally Italy's most dynamic city, was eerily deserted this week over fears of the coronavirus, turning life upside down.
"The plague had already entered Milan," Alessandro Manzoni writes in The Betrothed, the 19th-century Italian literary classic renowned for its vivid descriptions of the 1630 pestilence that gutted Milan.
Inthe novel, dreaded cart men wind their way through Milan's streets and "purposely let fall from their carts infected clothes, in order to propagate and keep up the pestilence, which had become to them a means of living, a kingdom, a festival." Manzoni writes that "the city, already tumultuously inclined, was now turned upside down."
The outbreak of the coronavirus in and around Milan is light-years from the horrors of the plague, and for now only just over a dozen people have died, and they were elderly or with serious underlying health conditions.
But the thumping heart of Italian culture and business nevertheless seemed upside down this week as a mix of precautionary public ordinances, mass tourist cancellations and old-fashioned fear made Italy's liveliest city feel dead.
An overview of Milan, the regional capital of Lombardy. The Lombardy region has recorded the vast majority of coronavirus cases in the country. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Models taking pictures of each other for Instagram in the Chinatown neighbourhood. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
The almost empty courtyard of the Pinacoteca di Brera. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Customers usually fill tables in the Brera area of Milan. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
On Via Alessandro Manzoni, hardly any cars or people went by and long lines of white taxis waited for fares that didn't come. It led down to Piazza del Duomo, where Milan's landmark cathedral, usually crammed with tourists and people rushing to the subway or into or out of the adjacent galleries, aperitivo spots and gorgeous museums, was mostly empty.
Only a few tourists, often wearing masks, showed up and took pictures of themselves, swarmed in gray clouds of the pigeons they fed out of their hands. The birds, perhaps because of the drop in supply, seemed more aggressive and numerous.
An empty store. Local businesses have been hit hard by the absence of tourists. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Travellers wearing masks at the central train station. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
La Scala was still shuttered. And the shopkeepers in bars and stores stared absent-mindedly out the windows or checked their phones. Security guards wandered around the Armani store because there was nobody to check, as dance music pulsed over the untouched clothes. At Milan's august Central Station, more people seemed to be leaving than arriving. The usual rush hour crush gave way to empty spaces.
But if the city felt as if it had lost its lifeblood, it still coagulated in certain corners. By the Ambrosiana museum, all the lunch tables were full and a famous soccer player and his showgirl girlfriend showed up to drink coffee at a fashionable cafe. Children were everywhere, often dressed up for carnival, as school had been canceled.
Hardly any locals wore a masks, and they shook their heads at tourists, and reporters, who did. ("The very infrequency of the cases contributed to lull all suspicions of pestilence," Manzoni wrote.)
On Thursday the street market in Via San Marco was uncharacteristically quiet. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Tables remain empty outside a bistro in Milan. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
An almost empty subway train. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
In the office of the regional president, Attilio Fontana, aides quipped that the masks "didn't do a thing" to stop the virus and that the Milanese wore masks only during carnival. On Wednesday night, Fontana posted a video on Facebook in which he explained that one of his aides had tested positive for the virus and pulled a green mask over his face.
By Thursday, though, there were small signs that the city was coming back to life. The Milan mayor asked the country's culture minister if the museums could open again. And a 6pm curfew was lifted on bars, sacred places for Milanese devoted to the hour of the aperitivo, though an ordinance prevented patrons from ordering, and gathering, at the bar.
Later in the evening, at N'Ombra de Vin, a popular mecca for wine in the Brera neighbourhood, couples and friends drank carefree in the cavernous basement while outside the beautiful people sipped and flirted over small tables.
A closed soccer stadium in Milan. The outbreak of the coronavirus forced Inter's Europa League match to be played behind closed doors on Monday night. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
A nearly empty cafe in the normally bustling Brera neighbourhood. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
Waiting for customers at the Grand Hotel et de Milan on Thursday. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
The amusement park inside the Sempione Park was mostly shuttered on Monday. Photo / Andrea Mantovani, The New York Times
But across the street, in Bar Jamaica, a landmark watering hole for some of Italy's most famous artists, things were still slow. Two young businessmen sat in an otherwise empty room talking about high rents while some regulars sat at tables by the bar with their dozing English setter. A red sign on the bar read, "It is not possible to order at the bar!"
In the 1630 plague, told so searingly by Manzoni, the sick were sent to a complex called the Lazzaretto, and "dread of sequestration and the Lazzaretto sharpened every one's wits." This week Maria Antonietta Fedele chatted with a friend by the church of San Carlo, all that is left of the old sick house. The plague was a world away, they said, laughing, but that didn't mean Milan didn't feel otherworldly.
