Is it a good idea to come to Rome in the Holy Year?

Apart from the fact that you should think twice about coming to Rome in the Holy Year 2025, as even a city of millions can be overcrowded, the biggest mass events in St Peter's Square are expected on the following days: 8-9 Feb, 8-9 March, 5-6, 25-26 and 28-29 April, 1-4, 10-11 and 16-18 May, 7-8, 14-15 and 25-26 June, 28 July to 3 Aug, 26-27 Sept, 11-12 and 30-31 Oct (no guarantee).

At the moment, Rome is a construction site on the very streets where most tourists walk. From the Vatican via the Bridge of Angels to Piazza Navona, you walk from one building site to the next, with the paths often becoming so narrow that the streams of tourists can hardly get past each other. You can find the current construction projects here. Some of them will be finished by the Holy Year, but many will not.

The population still living in the historic city centre is increasingly being pushed to the outskirts because the price surge of the Holy Year makes housing unaffordable. Tourists simply pay more. As a result, Rome within the historic city walls is in danger of becoming a tourist metropolis, where tourists are completely among themselves in countless pleasure canyons (including drugs).

The Vatican as a tourist attraction contributes to this development nolens volens. Holy years promote the sell-out of flats to hotel chains and leave behind a depopulated city. The city centre churches, once proud titular churches with their own clergy, have long since become largely museum-like, because the faithful who used to come to church are disappearing for the aforementioned reasons.

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Category: Roman notes