“It’s like something out of a movie” has been an oft-repeated refrain in the weeks and months since the COVID-19 outbreak upturned the lives of the hundreds of millions in its wake. Perhaps nothing throws that sentiment into sharper relief than real-time images of the world’s most trafficked locales—main thoroughfares, train stations, park playgrounds, urban squares, and, of course, restaurants, offices, concert venues, and places of worship. There is little the coronavirus has not closed, canceled, indefinitely postponed, or moved online, and nowhere is that more evident than in the shared spaces that define communities. Yet as visually striking as these images of empty public places are, it is on the front lines—where everyday heroes show up day after day in hospitals, post offices, fire stations, restaurant kitchens, grocery stores, and farms—that the impact of this disease is most emotionally palpable.

How this pandemic will change our lives is far from clear. What is almost certain, though, is that the ways we gather will never be quite the same. Snapped around the world—from a desolate central shopping street in Cairo to Rome’s Piazza Navona, where even the pigeons appear to have fled—these images offer a stark, cinematic view of the impact of the coronavirus on our landmarks as well as our lives.

Paris’s La Concorde square empty at rush hour.

A nearly empty road in Mumbai, as India continues its nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A deserted Piazza Navona on April 1 in Rome, during the third week after the Italian government mandated a nationwide lockdown.

An April 6 view of New York City’s 42nd Street as seen from Tudor City Bridge.

Stores were closed on Cairo’s Al-Moez Street, where the Egyptian government imposed a two-week curfew, during which all public transportation in the city was suspended.

Zócalo Capitalino in Mexico City’s historic center is almost empty during the afternoon of April 6.

An aerial view of almost no traffic on normally clogged Interstate 210 in Pasadena, California, on April 6. Los Angeles County authorities are warning of a spike in coronavirus infections this week.

A small public-park playground cordoned off with police tape in Ghent, Belgium.

In Nairobi, Kenya, volunteers from Sonko Rescue Team, an NGO privately funded by Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko, fumigate a street on April 6 to curb the spread of COVID-19.

An April 4 view of Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A street in Tokyo’s Ginza district—typically busy with nightlife—on April 7.

A high-street thoroughfare in Montreal in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Photo research by Lizzie Soufleris.

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