Italy: one year after the first Western lockdown

The pandemic suddenly felt much closer to home when Italy was plunged into a national lockdown one year ago today. It feels like a changed place to my second home, the place I return to every year to spend time with my mother’s side of the family.

I moved to Padua as the summer drew to a close. During those months Italians enjoyed a relatively restriction-free life, after enduring one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in Europe over spring last year. Then winter brought another surge in cases, which prompted a return to rules on every aspect of life, including a 10pm curfew. Eerie pre-recorded announcements of monotone voices reverberated across the streets, reminding people to keep their distance and avoid assembramenti (gatherings). It was so haunting that my colleagues and I (in a socially distanced office) looked at each other and said it felt like we were in an apocalypse.

The last year has unsurprisingly changed Italy. Both the culture and economy are not what they used to be. This is what I have seen:

Traditional cheek kissing has been replaced with socially distanced waves and smiles covered by surgical masks… but not without some effort. It’s been difficult for this touchy-feely society to change its ways. Zia Monica (my aunt) described adjusting to the lengthy lockdown last spring as akin to completely changing her warm, cuddly nature. One of my colleagues had to visibly restrain herself from hugging and kissing us with gratitude when we gave her a birthday cake in October. She stood in the corner feeling emotional, saying she wished she could say thank you to us properly. Everyone is catching themselves before they step out of line by getting too close, suppressing their natural inclination to kiss and embrace, unable to show affection and appreciation in the way they’ve been culturally brought up to do.

It’s all taken its toll on the heavily tourism-reliant Venice, where the washed-up businesses have been battered by the silent economic storm. Walking around you cross shuttered shops more often than not. Each one represents someone’s sunken line of work, no longer able to stay afloat. This once almighty Republic that grappled with the bubonic plague is now reeling from the lasting effects of its 21st century equivalent, taking both lives and livelihoods.

As Zia walked me back to the station a couple of weeks ago, she took to pointing out every single shop that has closed in the past year, with a running commentary of what each shop used to be. I think the narration was more for herself than for me, to process the immense changes that have taken place in the city and around the world in the past twelve months.

I had to stop her though because it was just too depressing. I preferred to quietly observe and take mental notes of the series of grey shutters that used to sell books or serve us ice cream, rather than having them pointed out to me at every turn.

As spring approaches after a long winter, dark nights and a sense of hopelessness have been replaced with longer days, spells of sunshine and a sense of hope. A feeling that grows with every new arm that receives a vaccine. Brighter days are coming.