One month before the Jubilee 2025, Rome transformed into a vast construction site

"It's strange to see a city that's completely under construction," adds her sister Clara, 20. Even if the Eternal City, which she is visiting for the first time, remains "still very beautiful."

From the fountains of Piazza Navona to the banks of the Tiber and the Pantheon, Rome has seen a surge in renovation work in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee, a major year of pilgrimage for which 33 million pilgrims from around the world are expected.

Organised every 25 years by the Catholic Church, the Jubilee is intended as a time of conversion and penance for the faithful with its long list of cultural and religious events - masses, exhibitions, conferences, concerts.

At the official shop, a stone's throw from the Vatican, tourists are greeted with information leaflets and calendars. In the window, water bottles, caps and T-shirts bearing the official logo of the event - which even has its mascot - are already on sale.

But with just one month to go until Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica on December 24, which will mark the official start of this "Holy Year," preparations seem far from over. And construction will continue for several more months.

On every street corner, excavators and workers are busy restoring the monuments. Angle grinders whirr behind fences. The deafening clatter of jackhammers mixes with the hum of traffic. The marble statues are sometimes covered with a cork board, sometimes wrapped in a plastic tarp.

"A disaster"

"It makes visiting the city very difficult. (...) It's a bit of a shame," Susanna Catellani, 22, from Modena (north), told AFP on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, whose statues are hidden under scaffolding.

On social networks, where enchanting posts about the "Dolce Vita" usually flourish, some Internet users are making fun of the subject, posing in front of monuments under construction. "When you visit Rome at the wrong time", we can read in the caption of an Instagram post, "liked" several thousand times.

Beyond their aesthetic impact, the preparations for this global event are also hampering traffic: taxis and VTCs are becoming increasingly rare, bus traffic - already unreliable in general - is even more disrupted, and motorists are furious at the narrowed or blocked roads, in a city where the car is king.

"Forget it, it's a disaster all over Rome," laments Tiziana Renzetti at the wheel of her car, saying it sometimes takes two hours to drive 10 km. "The Jubilee, I don't even want to think about it!"

"Traffic jams are only getting worse," confirms Marco Palmigiani. "Rome is going to explode," fears this 60-year-old taxi driver.

But the organizers want to be reassuring and assure that everything will be ready on time.

According to the municipality, "all the main objectives have been achieved on time". As of November 7, 2024, 105 construction sites had started out of the 249 planned interventions in the Roma Capitale area. "The percentage of openings will reach 70% by the end of 2024 and 90% by the first half of 2025", according to the left-wing mayor Roberto Gualtieri.

"The city has prepared to offer an even more beautiful face than Rome already is, and little by little the construction sites that have put everyone's patience to the test in recent months will disappear," declared Mgr Rino Fisichella, the main person responsible for the organization, at the end of October.