Rome's authorities will close public offices and ban cars from the streets tomorrow to make way for millions mourning Pope John Paul at his funeral.
Rome is already beginning to creak at the seams under the load of pilgrims pushing towards St Peter's Basilica where the Pontiff is lying in state and in front of which his funeral will take place.
"We are deciding whether to stop working from tomorrow until next week," taxi-driver Nicola d'Enrico said yesterday.
"Only half the roads in Rome are open now and the other half are gridlocked. And this is only Wednesday.
"By Friday, the only thing to do will be to stay at home. People are becoming very angry with the chaos already," he added.
Rome's prefect Achille Serra and mayor Walter Veltroni decided to shut offices from 6am to 6pm and block private cars from the centre from midnight tonight until 6pm tomorrow for public security reasons.
More pilgrims were streaming in from the winding alleys around the Vatican yesterday.
Public tent cities scattered around Rome's outskirts absorbed hundreds who had found no hotel space.
First visitors from Germany, Norway and Poland arrived on Tuesday night at Tor Vergata, an encampment on an open field 30-40 minutes' drive from the city centre.
"At first it was a catastrophe. There was no electricity and we had to eat on the floor, and there were no showers.
"Well, there are still no showers," said Loris Facchin, a member of Italy's civil protection force working at the tent city.
One family with two small children from Palermo, Sicily, arrived at the tent city shortly before midnight.
They had travelled 12 hours by ferry and four hours by car, then waited for more than seven hours to pay their respects to the Pope.
Then they realised they had missed the ferry back and had nowhere to go.
"So we went to eat some pizza, and then we met these policemen. They were so, so nice - they drove us out here," said Olimpia Piccolo, hugging her two small daughters.
Italian schools will be closed tomorrow, but teenagers from all over the country were taking the whole week off to come to Rome, confident teachers would excuse their absence.