(NYT) Italy Dispatch: Without Tourism, Life in a Tuscan Village Slides Back in Time

[AKR]

Italy Dispatch: Without Tourism, Life in a Tuscan Village Slides Back in Time
2021-01-04 16:10:53.248 GMT

By Gaia Pianigiani

(New York Times) -- The sharp drop in visitors since the start of the pandemic
pressed this small community in the hills of Chianti to cling to the
essentials: the pharmacy, the food store and agriculture.

CASTELLINA IN CHIANTI, Italy — For decades, the rolling hills of Chianti in
Tuscany have been a holiday destination for tourists from all over the world.
Nearly year round, visitors take on the region’s winding roads in their rental
cars, admiring the landscape laboriously sculpted by farmers, where vineyards
blend into olive groves, and forests of oak trees give way to cypress-lined
drives.

For me, this is home.

I remember strolling through the streets as a young girl in the summers,
surrounded by northern European visitors. My first job was at a local tourism
office, where I helped travelers with their assorted accentslook for paper
maps of the area. Hotels filled up quickly in those days.

More than 114,000 tourists passed through my village in 2019, and the number
was even higher in previous years.

But the pandemic — which has unsettled the globe and taken more than 75,600
lives in Italy alone — has brought tourism to a halt across the country and in
my village, Castellina in Chianti, a hamlet of 2,800. This year, foreigners,
who usually would be sipping espressos on the local bar’s terrace or grocery
shopping at the farmers’ market, are nowhere to be seen. And without them, the
town seems to have slid back in time.

Decades ago, villagers needing medical advice, paperwork for health services
and even some routine procedures like blood tests often turned to the local
pharmacy, which sits on the ruins of the town’s late Medieval gateway, just
across from the church on the cobblestone main street. Over time, though,
national policies required the town’s health office to expand its services, so
people went there instead.

But local authorities closed the health office in March because of the
coronavirus, and residents again found themselves relying on the pharmacy for
basic health care and routine tests.

“People came to us like they used to decades ago,” said Alessio Berti, 68, who
has run the pharmacy for the past 46 years.

In the first wave of the pandemic last spring, villagers lined up in front of
the pharmacy every day to hunt for vitamin supplements and face masks, he
said. The four pharmacists — all members of the same family — worked long
shifts and spent hours at the computer trying to help residents with
paperwork. The shop became a communal clinic, the access point to online
health services and an impromptu emergency room.

“They are well organized,” said Sonia Baldesi, a 67-year-old retiree who joked
that she was old enough to remember when Mr. Berti started working as the
town’s pharmacist. “They offer small services that allow us to skip a trip to
Siena, and that’s not a small thing these days.”

It’s a personal touch that is characteristic of the town. Masked, people greet
each other on Castellina’s street, even if they aren’t sure to whom they are
speaking.

“Residents all know each other and help each other if they can,” said Roberto
Barbieri, 52, who manages the village’s Coop supermarket.

Castellina was not hit hard by the coronavirus in the spring, but clusters
emerged in town by the fall. The virus was the topic of conversation on the
street or at the supermarket, as relatives of people who tested positive hoped
their loved ones would be spared.

So far, only one Castellina resident has died from the coronavirus, in
November.

“This time, it’s close to home,” said Claire Cappelletti, the 62-year-old
co-owner of a leather goods store in town that has been in her husband’s
family for more than a century.

Like other business owners who depend on the tourist season, the Cappellettis
have had a disastrous year. When the nationwide lockdown was imposed in March,
they were preparing for the start of the tourism season. But until
restrictions were loosened in June, they could not sell a single item — from a
handmade leather bag to colorful loafers.

They installed hand sanitizers and kept the wooden shop doors wide open for
better ventilation, but the first few Europeans who ventured to Castellina did
not arrive until late July. The usual throng of Canadians, Americans and
Australians never showed up.

Many tourists and some locals, however, were pleasantly surprised to find the
village free of crowds. The summer was reminiscent of the late 1990s, before
the buses loaded with tourists started arriving in Chianti.

“It was like it used to be, like stepping back in time,” Ms. Cappelletti said.

Nostalgia, though, is not good for sales. Ms. Cappelletti said her shop’s
revenues were down 80 percent since the pandemic started, a figure mirrored
throughout the village.But by working round the clock, and keeping expenses
low, the family has kept the business afloat.

They also opened an online store. Their usual clients — some longtime Chianti
visitors — started ordering goods from across the ocean, some just to help the
Cappellettis get through this year.

“We now have great-grandchildren of our first customers,” said Claire’s
daughter, Nicole Cappelletti, 32, while gently polishing a bright red woman’s
purse. “Our customer base saved us.”

Castellina is particularly well-known for its olive groves and vineyards of
Chianti Classico grapes — a popular attraction for foreign tourists. But this
year, in August, those spots were “full of Italians who traveled with their
own cars and stayed a few days,” said Martina Viti, 34, the manager of the
Agriturismo Rocca, a small family-run farm overlooking the valley under
Castellina.

Foreigners tend to stay longer, she said — and spend more.

“Italians have less interest in tasting wines and olive oil made by our small
farm,” she said. “So this year, we mostly rented our apartments with the
pool.”

For others in the village, the year was not so terrible.

“We were shut for a good part of the year, but when the restaurant opened,
Italians and some foreigners who own property here came and did not skimp on
food or wine,” said Giuseppe Stiaccini, co-owner of the town’s oldest
restaurant, La Torre. It opened in 1922 and served as a cafeteria for Allied
troops during World War II.

The local supermarket has also seen a boom in a year of busts.

Tommaso Marrocchesi Marzi, co-owner of the Bibbiano wine estate and president
of the local association of organic producers, said that even though he
expected to see a 20 percent decline in sales this year, he is hopeful for the
future as the Asian and United States markets start to pick up.

Mr. Marrocchesi Marzi remembered that until the 1990s, people from Rome, Milan
and other European cities competed to buy properties in Chianti because of its
services, natural beauty and boundless space for contemplation.

“Our countryside, like our wines, is not a commodity,” he said. “It’s a status
symbol, a way of living. To create the future, we need thinkers.”

But, he admitted, “to attract thinkers now we’d need a speedy internet
connection.”

Some locals — exasperated by the town’s slow internet service as they tried to
work remotely — hope that is one good thing that the pandemic will bring:
faster internet.

Recently, workers were digging a hole on the provincial road crossing the town
where eventually fiber-optic cables for faster connections will be buried. A
crowd of residents gathered to watch — with hope.

“Maybe we’ll jump into the 20th century soon,” an 87-year-old resident joked.