The Quiet Florence: the power of the sound

FLORENCE, ITALY – It’s been more than a year since Florence locked down for the first time, and the rate of Covid infection has increased by a factor of four. During this year Florence changes colors (the Italian government decides to use three colors for representing the increase of infections) and together with these colors changes the sound of this city.

Silence is a gift in our life; it represents a moment of self knowledge, but not for too long. Sound is an act of living. It’s as quiet in our street as it was a year ago.

The university used to mean reliable bouts of victory cries from laurel-crowned students, four times a year no less, which is when they graduate. The café used to cater to a stream of regulars with its affordable lunch menu of homey pasta dishes. The students of love are also gone — those painfully breaking up in the dark alleyways. No more agonized crying, shouting, and huffing off over the cobblestones.

For a broader soundscape, in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, former home to megaphoned protest speeches, tourist groups of 50 in matching baseball caps, dubious brides posing for the camera, Santa conventions, etc.

When the pandemic kicked in, the streets of Florence were deserted. On July 13th 100 metal wolfs by Liu Ruowang invaded the space of the two squares in Florence Piazza Pitti and Piazza Santissima Annunziata, representing the sound and feelings we faced at that time.

We start familiarizing ourselves with smaller sounds like a small transistor radio belonging to a few gentlemen living on the other side of the square. However, this absense of sound enabled our other senses to develop. Walking around the city, each architectural detail is more vivid.

So much remains uncertain a year later. For stores and small businesses in Florence, the hardship is incalculable. 3,000 restaurants in Tuscany have closed permanently since the beginning of the lockdown. But by now we have understood that this virus will not disappear from one moment to the next but we will have to live with it for a while. And so we will have to make sure to get used to the noise of forks on restaurant tables, the clamor of young people in the streets and the noises coming from bars. It will be something gradual, a slow return to the old normal life. And only when we begin to regret the silence of these months will it really mean that it will all be over. And that this incredible era will be behind us.