Two cars have been swallowed by a sinkhole on a street in Rome, one of many to blight the Italian capital in recent years.
A Mercedes SUV and a Smart car fell into the six-metre-deep and 20-metre-long chasm on Via Zenodossio in the Torpignattara district. Nobody was injured in the incident, which is believed to have been caused by a water leak in a garage beneath the street, according to reports in the Italian media.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper said some residents had reported a leak in recent days.
There has been a sharp increase in the number of sinkholes in Rome, caused by the city’s underground tunnels, sewers and ancient quarries, according to the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research.
In January 2020, a building close to the Colosseum had to be evacuated after a sinkhole appeared. In May of the same year, a 2.5-metre-deep chasm opened on the square in front of the Pantheon, revealing paving stones that dated to about 27BC. The square would ordinarily have been crowded but pedestrians were absent because of the coronavirus lockdown.
“Episodes that attest to the serious morphological fragility deriving from the characteristics of the city are multiplying,” said Roberto Morassut, a politician with the centre-left Democratic party.
Sinkholes have also affected other Italian cities. In early January, a giant chasm opened up in the car park of a hospital in Naples, swallowing several cars and forcing the temporary closure of a nearby residence for recovering Covid-19 patients. In May 2016, dozens of cars fell into a sinkhole in Florence.
