Abstract

It is an unusual flâneur who strolls along the empty streets during the pandemic. The rigid restrictions on movement prevent him from enjoying the sources of social life. The characters he likes to observe while walking the urban scene are no longer there. Places are the only sources of entertainment: the city’s architecture as the «total work of art» of the democratic era. The Milanese neighbourhood of Casoretto thus becomes an emblem of the «circumspect populism» that prompts a reflection on the state of the city’s civilisation.