2020: A year in pictures

Rarely does a year become seared into the public consciousness, when the mere mention of it brings with it vivid and distinct images, such as 1968 and 1945.

And regardless if we want it to or not, 2020 will become one of those years.

It was the year the world went into lockdown; the year governmental oversight destroyed a city; and the year of protests and forest fires so large they turned the sky orange.

And like those memorable ones before it, the images of this year will be with us forever.

We at CGTN Europe have collected some of those images.

This is 2020 in pictures.

Early in 2020, the image of workers in Wuhan, China building a hospital in days in order to treat thousands of COVID-19 patients gave the world a glimpse into what was to come. /VCG/

The Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia also shocked many when in March it went from this.....

to this in just two days.

Spain was one of the worst-hit countries in Europe.

By the end of 2020, it will have had almost 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases,

and more than 50,000 deaths.

But the inability to meet in person inspired some, like these musicians in Barcelona, Spain who performed to an auditorium filled with plants.

COVID-19 was not the only tragedy this year - and one of the worst moments was the Beirut explosion...

that killed around 200 people, injured another 6,000 and caused billions of dollars worth of damage.

Armenia and Azerbaijan also fought a bloody war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a contested territory between the two countries. The war displaced thousands – including this ethnically Armenian family that tried to take their house with them after fleeing their village.

Protests broke out in cities across the world, such as in France...

where people took to the streets over a new security law that restricts the sharing of images of the police

and also over police violence against marginalized people.

Thousands protested in Belarus, calling for President Alexander Lukashenko to resign because of an election that many believed was rigged.

This was also a year filled with fires, including the blaze in the Moria Refugee camp in Greece,

an overcrowded camp that housed an estimated 13,000 people,

and was designed for fewer than 3,000.

And the Australian bushfires that killed an estimated 3bn animals.

Also the California wildfires, which burned more than a quarter of a million acres of land

and caused the sky over San Francisco to appear orange.

And four years after the Brexit referendum, 2020 is also that year that the UK officially left the European Union.

But thankfully, the end of 2020 brought with it a light at the end of the tunnel as people started to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Unless otherwise stated, the photos from this article are credited to AP.