Science / Before-and-after satellite images of Venice's waterways amid coronavirus released

Paris: People from all over the world visit Venice to experience the wonders the its famous waterways, but the canals are empty due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released satellite images of the Italian city captured this month and the same time last year to highlight a distinct lack of boat traffic following the lockdown in March.

The Grand Canal and the Giudecca Channel appear almost empty compared to last year, and traffic from Venice to the island of Murano seems to be non-existent.

There were also two massive cruise ships docked at a port, but the area is also vacant. 

Italy was deemed the first hotspot of the coronavirus, which has now more than 165,000 cases and 21,645 deaths reported in the country.

Government officials quickly implanted a lockdown March 9 with the hopes of taming the infection.

The country that was once the epicenter of European infections is now seeing the rate of infections and deaths stabilize, sparking authorities to reopen parts of the economy.

But just like many government officials are saying around the world, normalcy may still be far down the road.

Since the lockdown, the lively waterways of Venice have become nothing but empty canals.

The ESA shared images of the city captured by its Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission satellite on April 13, 2020 and compared it with another snapped April 19, 2019.

The blue water that flows through the town are nearly empty, with some parts completely free of boats.

Usually there are multiple cruise ships that pull into the port, two can been seen in the 2019 image, but area is now empty.

According to the Italian news agency, ANSA, the streets and canals of Venice remained almost empty over Easter – with only police officers patrolling the streets and waterways.

Along with a drop in human activity following the lockdown, both Rome and Milan saw a decrease in nitrogren dioxide last month.

The average concentrations of NO2 for the past four weeks have been at least 24 percent lower than four weeks earlier this year. 

The average concentration from March 16 through 22 was 21 percent lower than for the same week in 2019.

In Rome, there has been a constant decline in NO2 pollution over the past four weeks - a 47 percent decrease that the same time last year.