--- title: "Curfew: the story of a bell that put the city to sleep" description: "From the medieval \"cover the fire\" to wartime blackouts and the 10 p.m. curfew of 2020: what curfews teach city dwellers, and how to get through one." url: https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/ --- TRANSMISSION 039 · 20 OCT 2026 ARCHIVE: [ZONE 3 — CYBERPUNK / SURVIVAL](https://survival-apps.com/en/zone-3/) · REFLECTION # Curfew: the story of a bell that put the city to sleep The Artificer of the Ruins — field note ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: the facade of Milan Cathedral at night in a blacked-out square, with piles of sandbags on the left, three silhouetted figures in long coats and glowing yellow street lamps, a purple sky and cyan light on the marble](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-duomo-hero.webp) Fig. 1 — the bell rings, and the city goes dark There is an hour, in the evening, when a city stops belonging to everyone and starts belonging to whoever decides for everyone. It used to be decided by a bell. The Construct has never heard one, but it knows a rule with a deadline when it sees one, and I have met a fair few systems like that. This is the oldest of them. ## Why it's called a curfew The explanation every dictionary repeats is literal. The name would come from Old French *couvre-feu*, “cover the fire”, with a close medieval Latin cousin, *ignitegium*.[[1]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota1) A bell rang in the evening and everybody had to bank their hearth. Houses were timber, built shoulder to shoulder, and one spark left alive overnight could take a whole district. ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: a bronze bell hanging in a stone tower at dusk, purple sky and a yellow street lamp lit in the distance](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-campana.webp) Fig. 2 — the evening signal According to the classic explanation, covering the fire meant exactly this: smothering the flames and leaving only embers, so that at night nobody had to watch over them. ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: a stone hearth with glowing embers and a domed metal cover hanging above the flames](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-focolare.webp) Fig. 3 — a hearth and a domed cover (illustration) There is a detail, though, that makes the story less smooth than it is usually told. The word shows up in texts only in the early fourteenth century, in forms like *corfour* (1320), even though the evening signal is much older. In 1895 Lionel Cresswell proposed a different origin, from *carrefour*, the crossroads, via medieval Latin *carreforcs*, “with four forks”. According to the author of an Oxford University Press blog article, the link with fire would be a folk etymology, born from the French form of the word.[[2]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota2) I can't tell you which of the two is true, and the article itself doesn't settle it. I still like that such an everyday word has an origin that is still being argued over. In London, in the Statutes of 1285, it is spelled out plainly: after the bell only authorised people walked the streets, and with a lantern in hand.[[1]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota1) A light of your own, in your hand. Keep that picture in mind, it comes back later. ## The William the Conqueror legend Anyone who has had a bit of English history will remember that William the Conqueror supposedly invented the curfew after the conquest of 1066, to keep his Saxon subjects in line. It's a good story: a foreign king, a subdued people, a bell as an instrument of control. That is why so many people tell it. The trouble is that it doesn't hold up. According to the same Oxford University Press blog article, the idea of the curfew as a cruel invention of William the Conqueror can't be sustained: putting out fires at a set hour was a widespread custom across medieval Europe, England included, and the signal most probably existed before 1066.[[2]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota2) The French word fed the suspicion: if *couvre-feu* is French, a Norman king must have brought it. It's a line of reasoning that adds up, but it remains a conjecture. That is why I treat it as a legend: useful for understanding why a curfew is so often felt as something imposed from above, less so for understanding where it really comes from. As far as I could verify, I found no early evidence in William's favour. ## The dark city, 1939–1945 With the war, the curfew changes jobs. You no longer cover the fire so it won't burn: you put the light out so the bombers can't find you. In Britain the blackout starts on 1 September 1939, and the darkened city does its own damage. According to the Imperial War Museum, by January 1942 one person in five had been injured in some way because of the blackout.[[3]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota3) One in five. Then come the rotas. Between late 1940 and early 1941, neighbourhood fire-watching becomes compulsory: ordinary people, organised neighbourhood by neighbourhood, keeping watch at night against fires.[[3]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota3) The old fire again, and the neighbours keeping an eye on it. In Italy the blackout begins in June 1940. On 26 July 1943 Badoglio (Italy's prime minister after Mussolini's fall) imposes a dusk-to-dawn curfew, with exemptions for priests, doctors and midwives. Under the Italian Social Republic (Mussolini's puppet state in the north), in Milan, the hours become 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in October 1943.[[4]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota4) I take the hours from Pagella Politica, an Italian fact-checking site, which checked them against sources: you'll find different ones elsewhere, and not all of them hold up. artefice@rovine:~$ curfew --timeline > 1285: London, after the bell only with a lantern > 1939: UK blackout (1 September) > 1943: Italy, dusk to dawn (26 July); Milan 21-5 (October) > 2020: 22-5 from 6 November ## The 10 p.m. of 2020 The closest one is the one we lived through. The Italian decree of 3 November 2020 bans movement between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., except for work, necessity or health, from 6 November.[[5]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota5) With decree-law 65/2021 (the government's reopening decree) the start moves to 11 p.m. from 19 May, to midnight from 7 June, and on 21 June 2021 it disappears. I'll stay with rules and dates here: how effective such measures were remains an open question in many cases ... ## A note on these days: France As I write, the curfew is back in the news in France. After the violence that followed the demonstrations of 17 October 2026, Prime Minister Lecornu asked the prefects to order “partial and localised” curfews to protect shops, stressing that there was no question of putting all of Paris under curfew. From the evening of 19 October the measures came into force in parts of Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. In Lille, Bordeaux and Nice they apply to minors only. In Paris, on the following nights, they run from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. in two perimeters (place de la République and Châtelet–Les Halles), with exemptions for residents, shopkeepers, people who have to get there for work and emergency services.[[6]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota6) That is the picture as of 22 October; a measure like this changes from night to night, and the prefectures' acts prevail. ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: an empty city street at night, with yellow street lamps, windows lit yellow and magenta and dark buildings on both sides](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-strada-vuota.webp) Fig. 4 — an empty street, in the evening (illustration) Destroying is easy: a night, a few hands and the will to do it are enough. Building takes far more: effort, patience, skills that are learned over time and can't be improvised. That is why anyone who spends these evenings shut indoors, with the city on hold and the news changing by the hour, already holds the hardest part. Surviving even in these conditions is possible, and it is done with simple things: a light, a radio, some supplies, a neighbour to knock on. What you build slowly, a little every day, lasts longer than what is pulled down in an evening. Courage, then: the curfew passes, and what you have set up stays. If you are in France, or have a trip planned, the practical rule is the usual one: read the order for your own area, because perimeter, hours and exemptions change from one municipality to the next. ## From the bell to the loudspeaker: curfews in cyberpunk cities Anyone who plays cyberpunk games knows the curfew well, even when nobody calls it that. In the cities of those worlds there is rarely a ban with the hour written on it: what you find instead are its gears, a voice from above telling you what you may do, zones you can't enter without a permit, someone checking papers. Lined up, they look a lot like the ones we have seen so far. The clearest example I found is *Deus Ex: Mankind Divided*, set in Prague in 2029. According to reviews, the city is split between “naturals” and augmented people: at checkpoints there are separate queues, and anyone with implants has to carry papers to show the police.[[8]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota8) It isn't a curfew in the strict sense, but it is the same mechanism: your permission to move depends on who you are and what you can show. With *Watch Dogs* things get more interesting, because here the curfew really exists. In the third game, *Legion*, the game's London is described as a city under curfew, with thousands of drones in the sky for deliveries, surveillance and crowd control.[[8]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota8) Security, in the game, is handed to a private company, Albion, in place of the police. And the first *Watch Dogs* starts from a blackout: in the story of that world, the great 2003 blackout in the north-eastern United States was blamed on a hacker, and from it was born ctOS, the system that runs the city. Darkness as the pretext for permanent control: the same logic as the 1939 blackout, taken all the way. ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: a pole with horn loudspeakers over an empty rainy street between dark towers, magenta and cyan light strips on the walls](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-altoparlante-cyberpunk.webp) Fig. 5 — the voice from above (illustration) Set next to the rest of this piece, the thread joining past, present and imagined future is quite recognisable: - **A SIGNAL THAT RULES THE EVENING** — the medieval bell, the blackout sirens, the prefectures' announcements of these days, and in the games the loudspeaker or the notice on the screen. The medium changes, not the function: telling everyone at once that from now on the rules are different - **WHO MAY MOVE** — the authorised people with the 1285 lantern, Badoglio's exemptions for priests, doctors and midwives, those for residents and workers in the Paris perimeters, the papers to show at checkpoints in imaginary cities. In every age the question is the same: who are you and where do you need to go - **THE PERIMETER** — a curfew never covers everything: in Paris it is two precise zones, in the games it is districts and gates. The boundary matters as much as the hour - **THE LIGHT** — a lantern in hand in 1285, darkness for the bombers in 1939, the torch in today's kit. In cyberpunk cities, at night, the only lights that impose themselves are other people's, not yours - **THE NEIGHBOUR** — Blitz fire-watching, Superbergamo in 2020, and in every story of that genre the survivor is the one with somebody to knock on ![cyberpunk comic-style illustration: an empty checkpoint on a night street, with two lanes divided by a concrete barrier, a guard booth with a yellow light and striped barrier arms](https://survival-apps.com/assets/img/coprifuoco-posto-di-blocco-cyberpunk.webp) Fig. 6 — the checkpoint, in the imagined future (illustration) artefice@rovine:~$ curfew --compare > 1285: the bell, the lantern in hand > 1943: dusk to dawn, written exemptions > 2020-2026: hours, perimeters, self-declarations and orders > hypothetical future: loudspeakers, checkpoints, papers to show That future is still, for now, a story. It interests me for a practical reason: in all four lines, what makes the difference is what you have with you when the signal sounds. A light, a radio, an idea of where to go and someone to go to. It is the same list as ever, and that is why it is worth preparing now, calmly. ## Getting through a curfew in a city What follows holds **within the rules**. No tricks for dodging checks: you get through a curfew better by knowing what is allowed. - **CLEAR EXCEPTIONS** — read the text of the rule first: who may move, for what, with which document. Keep the exceptions (work, necessity, health) at hand rather than reconstructing them in front of a patrol - **YOUR OWN LIGHT** — the 1285 lantern is now a torch, and it lives in the [minimum physical kit](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/036-minimum-physical-kit-radio-power-bank-torch/), with the radio and the power bank - **ONE INFORMATION CHANNEL** — radio, as in 036, or a mesh network like the one in [018 on Meshtastic](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/018-meshtastic-off-grid-communications/). It tells you what changes while the normal network is jammed or down - **OFFLINE MAPS** — to know where you are and where to go without mobile data, see [037](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/037-offline-maps-android/) - **SUPPLIES AT HOME** — if you go out little, you eat what you have: the inventory in [038](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/038-item90-home-supplies/) exists for exactly this - **THE NEIGHBOURS** — the part everyone forgets, and the people who lived through the Blitz in London understood it better than we do I want to spend two more lines on the neighbours. In 2020 in Bergamo, around three hundred volunteers organised themselves under the name Superbergamo[[7]](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#nota7), like the neighbours on the fire-watching rotas eighty years earlier. When rules tighten, what holds is the people on your own landing. I wrote about it in the [neighbourhood transmission](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/030-neighborhood-first-survival-network/), and I still think it's the least technical and most useful thing of all. Zone note This transmission is a historical account and a practical reminder, not legal advice. Any curfew must always be observed in the terms of the act that imposes it: the official text and the authorities' instructions of the moment prevail. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is it called a curfew? From Old French *couvre-feu*, “cover the fire”: at the evening bell people banked their hearths to prevent fires in timber cities. ### Did William the Conqueror invent the curfew? Tradition says so, but I found no early evidence and the evening signal existed across Europe. Better told as a legend. ### What was the curfew in Italy in the Second World War? The blackout starts in June 1940. On 26 July 1943 Badoglio imposes a dusk-to-dawn curfew with exemptions for priests, doctors and midwives; in Milan, in October 1943, under the Italian Social Republic the hours are 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. ### When was the Covid curfew in force in Italy? From 6 November 2020, 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., then 11 p.m. from 19 May 2021 and midnight from 7 June, until it was lifted on 21 June 2021. ### Does the October 2026 curfew in France cover the whole country? No: as of 22 October these are partial, localised measures ordered by prefects in parts of big cities such as Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. Duration and perimeters change, so check the prefecture's acts. ### What should I have at home during a curfew? A light, a radio with batteries or a power bank, some supplies, offline maps and your neighbours' numbers. Always within the rules in force. The curfew began as a way to protect the city from its own fire, and over time passed to other uses. What we're left with is reading the text, carrying a light, and knowing the person next door. The [RSS feed](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/033-rss-feed-without-masters/) is always on, if you want to know when the next one is out. May your code survive the apocalypse. ### Notes 1. **Etymology and the Statutes of London** — [Online Etymology Dictionary, curfew](https://www.etymonline.com/word/curfew); [Statutes for the City of London, 13 Edw. I (1285)](https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/13-edw-i-1285-eng-statutes-for-the-city-of-london); [Treccani, coprifuoco](https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/coprifuoco/) (in Italian). [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref1) 2. **William the Conqueror** — [Oxford University Press Blog, A four-forked etymology: curfew](https://blog.oup.com/2024/02/a-four-forked-etymology-curfew/) (2024). [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref2) 3. **Blackout and fire-watching in the UK** — [Imperial War Museums, How Britain prepared for air raids](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/blitz/how-britain-prepared-for-air-raids); [Imperial War Museums, The nation at a standstill](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/home-front/the-nation-at-a-standstill) (for the 1942 figure). [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref3) 4. **Curfew hours in Italy, 1940–43** — [Pagella Politica](https://pagellapolitica.it/fact-checking/no-il-coprifuoco-non-e-piu-lungo-di-quello-della-seconda-guerra-mondiale) (in Italian). [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref4) 5. **Decree of 3 November 2020** — [text of the decree (PDF, esteri.it, in Italian)](https://www.esteri.it/mae/resource/doc/2020/11/dpcm_3novembre2020.pdf). Later dates from decree-law 65/2021. [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref5) 6. **Curfew in France, October 2026** — [Paris Match Belgique, 20 October 2026](https://www.parismatch.be/actualites/monde/2026/10/20/suites-du-17-octobre-en-france-les-premieres-villes-placees-sous-couvre-feu-les-critiques-fusent-envers-lexecutif-EH7WVCLQTFBNHE4VCZLE63Z7JQ/) (in French); [Le Bonbon, Paris](https://lebonbon.fr/paris/news/couvre-feu-ce-mardi-a-paris-stations-fermees-zones-interdites-voici-ce-qu-il-faut-savoir/) (in French); [Sud Radio](https://www.sudradio.fr/sud-radio/comment-les-habitants-de-paris-lyon-ou-bordeaux-vivent-ce-couvre-feu-qui-rappelle-le-covid) (in French). [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref6) 7. **Superbergamo** — [Frontiers in Communication, 2022](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.787202/full): about 300 volunteers in 2020. [↑ back to text](https://survival-apps.com/en/transmissions/039-curfew-history/#ref7) 8. **Cities in *Deus Ex: Mankind Divided* and *Watch Dogs*** — [RPGFan, review](https://www.rpgfan.com/review/deus-ex-mankind-divided-2/); [Twinfinite, demo and the city of Prague](https://twinfinite.net/ps4/deus-ex-mankind-divided-demo-gives-look-at-the-city-of-prague/). For *Watch Dogs: Legion*: [The List, preview](https://list.co.uk/news/935/watch-dogs-legion) (London under curfew, drones); for Albion and the 2003 blackout as the origin of ctOS, the game's descriptions on [StrategyWiki](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Watch_Dogs) and on the dedicated wikis. 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