Now Diagon Alley, has started falling and it won’t exist anymore.
They are pulling it down, and then they’ll build something else at its place, something probably much more beautiful, new, different…
But Diagon Alley will be erased forever.

This morning I did something very silly, but maybe sentimental, my own way. I tried to slip over the barriers of the yard; people are not allowed to walk there anymore. Of course, being a clumsy dreamer, I was immediately caught by one of the builders, a Portuguese, I think. An adorable person.

I started telling him all the story of Diagon Alley; I spoke to him about my galleries on Pbase, which I had dedicated to the little street.
At the beginning he thought probably I was insane, but then maybe he realized… He allowed me to get into the yard, and I could take pictures from very close.

All the builders suddenly became very sympathetic and they did something incredible for me.
There was still a piece of wall up, with a door and many graffiti;I had taken pictures of it several times. They had to pull it down, but they waited.

The enormous scaring bulldozer, or whatever that metallic monster is called, was put in position by its driver and then he told me I could give the sign.
I did and the wall was pulled down.
In a way I was there with Diagon Alley for the last time.

I didn’t know at that time how much things would have changed and I wanted to save some pictures of what was destined to disappear in my daily environment.
Three years have passed and now the partial rebuilding of “Diagon Alley” is finished.

I’m not sure that later other old part of it won’t be pulled down at their turn to build something new at their place, but the builders told me this morning that they have finished their work and there is not any other building planned.

A few people have followed the vicissitudes of “Diagon Alley”through my photos during all this time and I’m glad to inform them that, after all, “Diagon Alley” didn’t change too much, only the more dilapidated very old industrial buildings on the right side were pulled down, but the small tunnels, the little houses and the ancient wall on the left side are still there and they seem to be determined to stay.

This photo-gallery, imagined as a kind of “visual Requiem” of the elderly pathway has turned out to be a wink of complicity to the builders who have worked there for these three years.
They have always been very kind to me and have allowed me to walk through even when officially it would have been forbidden for pedestrians.

I took the last photos of them this morning, on the 3rd of August 2009, when they were asphalting the last part of “Diagon Alley” which had been rebuilt.