As lockdowns lift across Europe, cultural institutions like museums will likely be a popular venue for people who just spent the last three months sitting at home. Newly reopened museums, however, must contend with new social-distancing policies and do their part to reduce community transmission. Around the continent, museums and cultural institutions are getting creative to enforce social-distancing regulations.
Photo: Mostovyi Sergii Igorevich/Shutterstock
Florence Cathedral Reopens With Limited Visitors and Flashing, Vibrating Necklaces
At the Florence Cathedral, only 200 visitors will be allowed per day, and they’ll wear lanyards with electronic devices that will vibrate when they stand too close to others. The rectangular devices, which are able to sense when they’re within six feet of another necklace, will vibrate, light up, and emit a sound, so there’s really no excuse for not keeping your distance.
See the lanyard in action within the cathedral is the following Youtube video:
Other museums require visitors to book tickets in advance, wear masks, or undergo temperature checks upon entrance. At Paris’s Giacometti Institute, only 10 people are allowed in every 10 minutes, and at the Bavarian State Painting Collections’ museums in Munich, visitors are limited to one per 215 square feet. At Turin’s Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, patrons can expect designated walking paths, temperature checks, and time-slotted tickets.
And at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale, visitors strolling through a major Raphael exhibition will be sorted into small groups and led through the galleries by a guard — not acting as a guide but a chaperone to keep them safe. 