The 2025 Jubilee Year: Upside and Downside

Source: FSSPX News

As Rome prepares to welcome more than 30 million pilgrims and tourists during the Jubilee year, residents are already lamenting a surge in housing costs and fear that the Eternal City will lose some of its soul in the coming months. For their part, municipal authorities are proud of the transformations that have been made.

Roman motorists breathed a sigh of relief on December 23, 2024, the day when the new underground passage under the Tiber not far from the Vatican was inaugurated with great fanfare, after a year and three months of traffic jams that users are not likely to forget.

A successful project that was part of the developments planned to welcome the 32 million visitors that the Vatican expects in 2025 for the Jubilee year. To be fair, Romans have mixed feelings about the celebrations that are once again putting the Eternal City in the spotlight.

On the one hand, the city is rejoicing: “It’s a miracle that so much work has been completed on time,” Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, told The New York Times on Christmas Eve. The Roman mayor – a center-left liberal – says he sees the Jubilee as a chance to renovate his city and make it “greener and more inclusive.”

But while Gualtieri and the Vatican’s top prelates spent most of last December inaugurating renovated monuments, repaved streets, and new pedestrian squares, the influx of pilgrims could have unexpected and less positive consequences.

This is where the downside appears: the construction sites for the Jubilee works have in fact left parts of Rome strewn with detours, causing endless traffic jams that have left motorists rather unhappy.

“For me, the Jubilee is an ordeal,” laments Martina Battista, a 23-year-old medical student interviewed by the NYT, who had to leave the apartment she was renting because her landlord wanted to turn it into a bed and breakfast.

For many Romans, already fed up with the price of real estate in the city center and exasperated by the hordes of tourists who wander through the brand new shops in search of a refreshing limoncello or a tiramisu, the Jubilee adds to the discontent. In the Piazza Navona district, many streets still bear the names of the trades that were once concentrated there: “Baullari” for suitcase makers, “Cappellari” for hats, “Sediari” for armchairs and chairs.

Today, the district has become a hub of souvenir shops, cafés, and restaurants where tourists form long queues to take pictures of themselves eating pasta “al cacio e pepe,” one of the most popular Roman dishes.

As the Jubilee approaches, rental prices have increased by up to 20% in a year in some areas, and the number of available rentals has fallen by up to 35%, according to Idealista, an online real estate platform. Transport, the price of basic necessities, and even household waste collection have also been affected by the approach of the Holy Year.

“It’s not the city that changes the tourist, it’s the tourist who changes the city, that’s the height of it,” complains Michele Campisi, president of the heritage protection association Italia Nostra. City Hall is absolving itself of any responsibility: “The Jubilee is not a political choice, it has existed since 1300: the question is how to manage it,” said Roberto Gualtieri.

But some residents complain about security measures that are too restrictive for their taste and yet essential to foil possible terrorist attempts: for example, shopkeepers in the Borgo Pio district fear that the traffic barriers and pedestrian barriers will damage their businesses, which have already suffered from two years of almost uninterrupted work.

At the beginning of 2024, Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization and, as such, responsible for organizing the 2025 Jubilee, warned that the Romans would “suffer a little,” assuring that the result would be a more livable and environmentally friendly city. As he walked up the avenue leading to the Vatican on Christmas Eve, the prelate assured the press: “The time has come. Rome is ready to welcome pilgrims.”