Back to mountains

How Covid is pushing some Italians towards mountain life

Young people have been abandoning Italy’s mountain villages for decades – but could this be about to change?

By Federico Formica

Elena Pascolini remembers the exact day she decided to not return to Ancona, the seaside town where she had lived her entire life. It was September 8, 2016, and she had just finished a ten-day shift as a Civil Protection volunteer in Arquata del Tronto, a central Italian town of one thousand inhabitants. It had been hit by a huge earthquake that August, which killed 299 people in the region. "Back in the city, I felt useless,” the 46-year-old explains. “My life no longer fit the person I had become. And the thought of going back to my comfortable home knowing that those people no longer had one made me sick. I had to stay." 

And so she stayed. Today, Elena lives in the heart of the Apennines, the mountain range that covers most of Italy’s inland area. She is surrounded by the bleakness of the ruins as well as the beauty of the mountains, meadows and forests. Alongside her boyfriend Stefano Cappelli, she runs the only accessible hiking lodge on Mount Vettore, the highest peak of Sibillini National Park. Stefano previously worked as Arquata’s local baker and was a rescue coordinator following the disaster. He says he knew every single person he saved from the rubble.