This Video of Italians Singing in Solidarity Amid Coronavirus Isolation Is the Light We All Need Right Now

The Italians are proving their own resilience in the battle against coronavirus.

Over the last several days the news coming out of Italy’s quarantined borders has been bleak, dire, and heartbreaking at best. With its streets empty, and its hospitals full, the country is at a standstill. Which makes the following video all the more beautiful and surreal.

On Thursday evening, David Allegranti, a journalist working for Il Foglio newspaper, shared footage of Italians singing a local folk song together in the darkened streets in Siena, a town in the country’s north. He wrote on Twitter, "In Siena, the city to which I am very attached, you stay at home but you sing together as if you were on the street. I was moved.”

Though he did not take the footage himself, Allegranti told HuffPost he was still equally touched while watching and felt the need to share.

“This video is touching,” Allegranti, who is based in Rome, told the news website. “The first time I saw it I started to cry.”

Others on social media shared videos showing alternative angles to the same beautiful sing-a-long.

According to The New York Post, the song is “E mentre Siena dorme” (“And While Siena Sleeps”), a traditional folk song, typically performed in a show of pride. The Post explained, the song celebrates “the flowering herb, often used in traditional medicine or perfumes, which once grew spontaneously in the Piazza del Campo neighborhood of rural Siena, outside the walls of the medieval city center.”

To continue this small bit of joy, HuffPost reported, the residents in Siena plan to hold a citywide sing-a-long, at 9 p.m. on Sunday. They will, however, do so all from the safety of their own homes.