Tourist trolleys give way to strollers in the shade of the statue of the Madonna. On a bench, an elderly couple seeks shade while a flock of pigeons drink from a fountain on a particularly warm mid-October morning. "It feels like we've gone back 40 years," says Franca Melis, a "original Stampacina," strolling through Piazza del Carmine where life flows slowly and peacefully. As if the brawls and broken bottles between homeless people, drug dealers, and petty criminals were just a sad, distant memory of a neighborhood now reborn. "See? There are no police patrols or carabinieri now," she says, "and yet the square is quiet and bustling with families and passersby, just like it was years ago when Piazza del Carmine was the city's high-class meeting place."
Good vibes
The elusive feeling of greater safety seems to have spread throughout the shops lining the square. "Something has certainly changed," confirm brothers Claudio and Massimo Lorrai, owners of a barbershop facing the square and well-known comedians with the Lapola theater company. "And even in the evening, when the sun goes down, the atmosphere seems decidedly calmer."
Safer
A few meters away, the satisfaction with the security crackdown is similar. "The fights and shouting have decreased," say both from behind the counter of a party favor shop and from the cash register of a bar on the corner of Viale Trieste. "Sometimes a few thugs return to the square, but the police patrols quickly manage to prevent the situation from escalating."
For half a century, Giuseppe Neri has run an antique shop overlooking the square. Seeing it bathed in sunshine, inhabited by children and the elderly, and photographed by tourists, he thinks only of one thing: "The red zone will expire in mid-November. It's essential to extend it to ensure safety in a square that can truly be reborn," he says. "Of course, it took extreme measures by the prefecture and police headquarters to bring a little tranquility, but if it can help restore peace to a beautiful corner of the city, so be it."
Waterfalls in the center
The other side of the coin for a downtown struggling to recover is Piazza Matteotti. Fresh from a long and painful redesign that brought light to a dark and often seedy corner of the waterfront, it's exposing all the flaws of a superficial planning. Just look at the "urban lake" that has formed near the bus stop on Via Roma, in front of the Town Hall.
The evocative fountain, which slopes downward, pours thousands of liters of water into the street, right where passengers on CTM lines in transit get off, improvising as tightrope walkers to emerge unscathed onto the portion of pavement that remains dry.
LM