I came to work on the Metro today, writes John Hooper in Rome. There were three people in the carriage when I got in. By the time we reached Termini, Rome's central railway station, you could still find a seat.
The US State Department's controversial advice to Americans to take care visiting Italy during its general election campaign may or may not have had an effect on US tourists. But it certainly seems to have worried the Italians themselves.
Washington offered two reasons for caution. One was that demonstrations could degenerate into violence, as indeed one already has. This is intensely sensitive here because a key element of Silvio Berlusconi's campaign has been to attack the centre-left for failing to disown its radical fringe.
Late yesterday, his challenger, Romano Prodi, returned to the subject, accusing the government of having started the scare. In his latest statement on his website he quoted a US spokeswoman as having said: "The Italian government is aware of this announcement and it corresponds to several public statements made by various leaders of the Italian government.�"
But, as today's half-empty Metro showed, while the politicians wrangle over that aspect of the US warning, ordinary people are likely to be more worried by what it went on to say: "Italy continues to be under heightened public threat by al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists for its continued participation in multinational activities in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Memories are still fresh of what happened before the last big election in the Mediterranean. Almost 200 Spaniards died in 2004 when Islamist extremists set off a string of bombs on commuter trains entering the capital.
However, it is worth underlining that the situation there then was different from the one here now. With hindsight, it could be seen that the Spanish created a perilous opportunity for Osama bin Laden's followers to insert themselves into the democratic process and give an impression - arguably a misleading impression - that they had decided the outcome.
On the one hand, there was a government that sent Spanish troops to Iraq and had no plans to pull them out; on the other, an opposition committed to immediate withdrawal. Italy's politicians long ago spotted the trap and quietly set about avoiding it.
The Berlusconi government has said it plans to withdraw its contingent from the US-led coalition by the end of the year while the opposition, which was originally pledged to a Spanish-style immediate pull-out has gradually shifted its position to the point at which it is offering a phased withdrawal in consultation with its allies and the Iraqis themselves. That is why Iraq has not been an issue in this election. And why an al-Qaida bombing would make little sense, even by its own twisted logic.
