Pilgrims’ progress? The Vatican Jubilee has frustrated Romans and tourists alike

‘So many people came to Rome that it was unbearable and every house was a hotel and it still wasn’t enough.’ As Rome hurtles towards the Jubilee year of 2025, these might be the sentiments of umpteen grumbling Romans at the counter of any coffee bar in town today. In fact, they are the words of Paolo dello Mastro, writing in his memoirs of the Jubilee Year of 1450.

Preparations for an influx of pilgrims in prospect of the quarter-century celebrations of the Roman Catholic Church, scheduled to run from Christmas Eve this year to Epiphany 2026, are (for the most part) hurriedly nearing their conclusion. The already famously impossible Roman traffic has been groaning under the added strain of months of roadworks. Much has been made in viral videos of disappointed tourists slaloming amid a festival of scaffolding as monuments in the centre of town are under wraps for restoration.

Rome, as they say, wasn’t built in a day. Photo: Agnes Crawford

Rome’s glories are innumerable and in my work as a guide I’ve had no trouble avoiding both crowds and hoardings; but I was delighted to see the fountains of the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona once again flowing as November drew to a close and, despite the naysayers, work elsewhere in the centre of town seems to be coming together. When I spoke to Dario Nanni, president of Rome city council’s Jubilee committee, he told me that the underpass that will separate pedestrians from traffic between the Castel Sant’Angelo and St Peter’s is on track to be inaugurated on 20 December, four days before Pope Francis will open the Holy Door of the great basilica with its promise of absolution for the faithful. (Tradition dictates that the door is bricked up from inside between Jubilee years – though the pontiff no longer starts the wall-dismantling process himself, silver hammer in hand.)

The ‘Fontana del Moro’ – originally designed by Giacomo della Porta in the 1570s with additions by Bernini a century later – in Piazza Navona after the conclusion of restoration work last week. Photo: Agnes Crawford

The first Jubilee Year of the Roman Church was proclaimed in 1300 when Pope Boniface VIII issued a decree promising plenary indulgence to anyone visiting the papal basilicas of St Peter’s and St Paul outside the Walls to boost the lucrative business of pilgrimage in the beleaguered Caput Mundi. The word jubilee, with its overtones of joyousness, is rooted in Jewish tradition. The yobel is the archaic name for the ram’s horn trumpet, more often called the shofar, sounded on the feast of Yom Kippur to herald every 50th year. Long before Rome was a fratricidal twinkle in Romulus’s eye, this holy year followed ‘seven sabbaths of years’. Debt was forgiven, enslaved people were freed, agricultural land was granted a fallow year, and people returned to their homes: a year of pardon and contemplation.

Fresco in the basilica of St John Lateran showing Pope Boniface VIII making a proclamation, usually considered to be that of the first Jubilee in 1300. Photo: Agnes Crawford

Twelve centuries after Rome’s brutal sacking of Jerusalem, the Hebrew term was borrowed without irony. The next Jubilee was in 1350. In the interim Boniface had been kidnapped and died in captivity; a series of French popes sought refuge at Avignon; the Black Death of 1348 had ripped through Italy; and the most recent major earthquake to hit Rome had dealt a coup de grâce to the vestiges of the once mighty Imperial city. At the peak of empire, Rome’s population had topped a million; as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse rode roughshod through the pope-less medieval papal city it was home to, perhaps, 30,000. The timorous Clement VI stayed well away. Nevertheless Vatican records suggest that over the course of 1350 1.5 million people crossed mountains and seas, amid violence and plague, in search of indulgence.

Journeys will, one hopes, be rather less treacherous for 21st-century pilgrims. Events throughout the year dedicated to a gamut of groups, with gatherings and prayers overseen by the pontiff, will spread crowds across the calendar: adolescents, sportspeople, the disabled and communications workers are among those with dedicated events. The Jubilee of Artists will be celebrated from 15–18 February, concluding on the feast day of Fra Angelico – beatified by John Paul II in 1982 and declared patron of Catholic artists – painter of the glorious (if now rarely visitable) Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican Palaces. His tomb can more easily be visited at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

The tomb of Fra Angelico in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Photo: Lawrence OP via Flickr; published under a Creative Commons licence [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

If one doesn’t fit in elsewhere, the Jubilee of Consolation on 15 September feels like a catch-all in this weary decade. Many events will be held at St Peter’s, which non-pilgrims are best to avoid until 2026, while larger events will be held elsewhere: the Youth Jubilee will take place, as it did in 2000, at Tor Vergata in the south-east of Rome. A million young Catholics from all over the world are expected and will register for various packages available through the Church: up to €250 for six nights’ accommodation in church halls and the like across the outskirts of the city, packed lunches, public-transport passes, logoed hats, water bottles, and rosaries. Jubilee merch hits different.

I also spoke with Eva Cammerino, a councillor in the fifth Municipio, an eastern borough of the city far from baroque fountains and piazzas, where flyovers jostle with the crumbling remains of ancient tombs and post-war concrete. She talked enthusiastically of the ‘breath of air’ works were bringing to the public spaces used by the majority of Romans, whose concerns are far from those that have been annoying so many frustrated TikTokers.

Indeed, as well as a total renovation of the tram network, Dario Nanni cites more than 500km of major roadworks within the sprawling city limits – which includes the Via del Mare to the coast, and the Grande Raccordo Anulare, the encircling motorway that Fellini’s Roma compared to one of the rings of Saturn. The majority of the 800 projects are far from most tourists’ gaze, and some will be a legacy enjoyed by Romans only after the Jubilee has been and gone. Funding is a mix of EU post-Covid regeneration funds and Italian government investment, with a contribution from the Church that is, Nanni emphasises, ‘minimal, absolutely minimal’.

The ‘Holy Door’, at the northernmost entrance of St Peter’s Basilica, has panels cast in bronze in 1949 by the Sienese sculptor Vico Consorti; they depict scenes from the New Testament. Photo: Vatican Pool/Getty Images

If the city council is optimistic about the injection of investment, most Romans speak with the weariness of a city that has seen it all. I’ve come across not a single Roman looking forward to the Jubilee, and none of the coffee-counter chat across town mentions faith. Romans are a charmingly cynical bunch. Hoteliers and restaurateurs complain that the pellegrini don’t spend any money – but perhaps they should be a little more optimistic; after all, Paolo dello Mastro tells us that back in 1450 ‘the apothecaries and the painters of holy images […] made a fortune; but after them the Osterie and Taverns…’.