Double masked

It was 2020, Carnival in Venice. Covid19 erupted and Carnival celebrations were canceled. The crowds of tourists that were flooding the city on the previous days, were suddenly gone. Piazza San Marco was emptied. It was as if the crowd was drained with the waters of the lagoon. It was a crazy atmosphere, the apocalyptic scenario of a desert Venice. In the scarce faces that still roamed the streets, to the Carnival masks, surgical masks were added, in a burlesque and laughable redundancy – in fact very appropriate to Carnival. And even those faces ended up disappearing. There remained the doves and seagulls hopping on the pavements, the chairs piled up on the terraces. There is something extraordinary and unrepeatable about these days, as if we had traveled to a time before the invention of the tourist and the selfie. Empty and silent Venice.