Jubilee, Piazza Pia reopened. From the Trevi Fountain to Piazza Risorgimento all the construction sites already completed

On the morning of 23 December, Piazza Pia, the symbolic work of the Jubilee 2025, was returned to the city of Rome. It is a large pedestrian square with trees and fountains that joins Castel Sant'Angelo to Via della Conciliazione and the Vatican, creating a single walkable space up to the Colonnade. Below the square a new tunnel, built for the occasion, allows cars to pass towards the Tiber embankment. The construction works, carried out by Anas, lasted 450 days and cost 85.3 million. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, Rome Mayor and Jubilee Commissioner Roberto Gualtieri, and Lazio Region President Francesco Rocca. Among the religious authorities the Vatican Secretary of State Card. Pietro Parolin and the Pope's Jubilee delegate Monsignor Rino Fisichella

The number of completed Jubilee works increases. On 22 December, water flowed again in the Trevi Fountain (a monument that receives five million visitors a year), after the conclusion of the extraordinary maintenance work that lasted about three months. The restored monument will be visitable according to a new modality that will allow it to be admired without the overcrowding that has always characterised its fruition: access will be allowed to 400 people at a time. At the moment there is no ticket, but it is not excluded in the future, Gualtieri announced, that it could be introduced.

You enter from 9am to 9pm daily (except for some closing windows to remove coins or clean the tank) assisted by stewards at the entrances. While queuing, you can get information about the monument by framing a qr code. After 9 p.m., entry is free. In the basin one can freely move around and sit down, with no time limit. However, one cannot eat, smoke, drink, nor - a novelty for this reopening - sit on the edge of the pool. The maintenance, carried out by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina headed by Claudio Parisi Presicce, cost 327,000 euro of Caput Mundi funds, i.e., the 'jubilee' tranche of the Pnrr that has financed, among other things, the make-up of other historic fountains already inaugurated, such as those in Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the two near the basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni, and the one in Piazza Bocca della Verità,

On 20 December, the other redeveloped 'gateway' to the Vatican, Piazza Risorgimento, was inaugurated, and a few days earlier the adjacent via Ottaviano was completely pedestrianised. Also on 22 December, the areas of Piazza della Repubblica and the Dogali Gardens, near Termini Station, were returned to the city. Where there was a degraded space with a car park, badly maintained trees and even a petrol pump there is now a large pedestrian square with marble seating, quality paving and new vegetation that enhances the facade of the Planetarium and the Granary building of Gregory XIII of Roma Tre. Via Cernaia, with its double overlooks on the archaeological remains, has been pedestrianised: vehicles now only pass through Via Parigi. Even the Dogali Gardens, near the station along Via Luigi Einaudi, once seriously degraded, have now been redeveloped with draining limestone pavements, flowerbeds and a brand new public toilet. The parallel to Via Einaudi, Via delle Terme di Diocleziano, is still being worked on: it will be pedestrianised in the coming weeks, but in the meantime a large walkable area has already been created, reconstituting the front of the National Roman Museum. The widespread construction site has covered an area of 8 hectares, almost eight football fields; it was started on 24 July 2023 at a cost of over 16 million euro.