ROME — Mayor Roberto Gualtieri announced Tuesday that the city has completed the total reorientation of Rome around the Eur towers, a project he called «the return of a jewel to the Capital» and which now requires every street sign, bus route and public bench in the city to face the complex.
Under the plan, all 2,800 streets have been renamed after the towers, with Via del Corso now officially «Corso delle Torri Eur, Section 1 of 4,000.» The city has installed 4,000 directional arrows, one for every 300 residents, and traffic police have been retrained to point at the towers instead of directing cars.
«We are not just restoring a building,» Gualtieri said at a ceremony where he personally rotated the Colosseum's orientation by 15 degrees using a system of hydraulic jacks. «We are teaching the city to look the right way.»
The project has spread. Bus drivers now announce each stop as «still not the Eur towers,» and the city's taxi association has voted to refuse any fare not ending at the complex. A new municipal law requires all Romans to spend one hour per week walking toward the towers, with a special lane on the ring road reserved for citizens making the pilgrimage on foot.
At the Vatican, a spokesperson confirmed that the Pope's Wednesday address will now be delivered facing the Eur towers, with a large mirror installed in St. Peter's Square to reflect the view. «It is a matter of urban respect,» the spokesperson said.
By next month, the city plans to install a second set of arrows pointing back at the first set, «so no one gets confused about which way is which,» according to a mayoral decree.