“Happiness is only real when shared”, wrote Lev Tolstoj in “Family Happiness” (1859).

In these days of forced quarantine, we observe our streets turning desert, museums closing, and the beauty of our cities becoming sadly unshared, since there are no tourists appreciating those things we slowly have become accustomed to.

We think we’ll need to print this new scenario into our memory for decades to come;

to not forget what our “normality” in these days looked like;

how useless the beauty of our cities had become, alone and unseen.

How we missed all the small things we until then had taken for granted: a walk in the park, the view of a church, a building, a statue.

Inspired by “All This Useless Beauty”, a song by Elvis Costello from 1996, we have gathered photos from the most beautiful spots of Italy, stolen by public webcams, portraying empty streets and squares, left by themselves, abandoned to their pointless beauty.

Sitting confined in our forced quarantine - between the four walls of our homes and sometimes thousands of kilometers away from the portrayed spot - we have chosen a selection of shots taken during Italy’s first confined Sunday (March 15th): a sight we would never have imagined to be witnessing, at least not in broad daylight. Finally we turned them into postcards: to share and to always remember these sad and awkward moments.

Italy finds herself in a complete lockdown to contain the spread of the Coronavirus (CoVid-19) since March 11th. Since then, almost all shops are closed (except for supermarkets and grocery stores) and a Ministerial Decree has issued fines for all those who are found unjustifiably on the streets. While we are writing this text, the casualties have even exceeded the official number of deaths registered in China. At this moment, Italy now has 41,035 cases, 3,248 deaths and 4,440 recovered under its belt. Local health systems in the northern part of the country are collapsing and the forecast of the economical backlash that will hit the country during the upcoming months looks even worse than the one following the crisis of 2008.

What is happening to this leftover beauty when nobody is looking at it?

It becomes useless. As useless as an empty movie theatre showing a Fellini film, an empty theatre during a Shakespeare play, an empty museum conserving the wonders of art, a Mona Lisa nobody is looking at.