And yet it moves. Ten years on from the earthquake in Central Italy

A few weeks ago, a gigantic crane appeared on the cliff from which the medieval fortress of Arquata watches over the demolished village and the entire upper Tronto valley. It has been doing so for more than eight hundred years, and we hope it will continue to do so for at least another thousand, now that its restoration seems to have begun after a very long wait. A little further down, in the hamlet of Borgo, the complex comprising the Church of San Francesco and the adjoining convent – the heart from which Arquata emerged as a community eight centuries ago – remains shored up and overgrown with weeds, frozen in time since the 2016 earthquake. There is a restoration plan, but nothing is happening. The painful mysteries of reconstruction.

I am referring to Arquata del Tronto because, at 3.36 am on 24 August ten years ago, when the Sibillini fault line was reactivated and changed the face of the central Apennines, I was there, on holiday in my mother’s home village, witnessing destruction that would affect not only the lives lost, the homes and material possessions, but the entire social and cultural fabric of that part of Italy.

Ten interminable years have passed since the onset of the ‘Amatrice-Norcia-Visso seismic sequence’, which killed 237 people in Amatrice and eleven in Accumoli, in Lazio, whilst in Arquata, in the Marche region, there were forty-eight deaths in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto and three in the main town, where my home was. It was only the beginning. On 26 and 30 October, further tremors would extend the devastation to the Umbria-Marche side of the Sibillini Mountains, also taking their toll on the villages that had been rebuilt following the 1997 Valnerina earthquake: Norcia, San Pellegrino, Preci, Ussita, Visso, Camerino, Castelsantangelo sul Nera, Castelluccio, Pieve Torina, Fiastra, Muccia, Montegallo, Amandola, Tolentino, Montefortino, San Ginesio, Montemonaco and many more were added to the list of towns left devastated and depopulated – some of which remain so to this day. It felt like the final blow when, on 18 January 2017, during one of the harshest and snowiest winters of the last forty years, an earthquake struck Abruzzo, where people were still reeling from the damage caused by the 2009 earthquake that had destroyed L’Aquila. It was that tremor that triggered the Rigopiano avalanche, in which 29 people lost their lives.

There was a time of emergency and rescue operations, of the Civil Protection’s exceptional response, of providing shelter for the displaced, of salvaging cultural treasures, and of compiling an inventory of the damage – one that was never final, because the 92,000 aftershocks following the Amatrice-Norcia-Visso sequence long prevented it from being considered as such.

Then the waiting began. Until mid-2020, in fact, we saw little of it, apart from the emergence of villages made up of prefabricated modules for residents who had chosen to remain close to their collapsed villages, to what remained of their communities, their livelihoods and their world. Others had gone elsewhere, making use of the independent rehousing grant. A crater spanning 8,000 square kilometres, 40,000 displaced people, 28 billion in total damage, and the obligation to comply with stringent anti-seismic regulations were all compounded by an unprecedented fragmentation of responsibilities: four regions (Marche, accounting for 65 per cent of the crater, Lazio, Abruzzo and Umbria), 138 municipalities, a myriad of bodies managing water, roads, land, productive activities, mountain communities and other local communities, and special offices for reconstruction. The rules had to be rewritten, because in a country as exposed to seismic emergencies as ours, there has never been a single, clear code for dealing with them. With every earthquake, we start from scratch and change everything, and the 2016 earthquake was no exception; yet the inaction of the early years was so exasperating that it made us doubt, not so much the possibility, but the genuine will to rebuild.

The appointment of a Special Commissioner to guide and coordinate that myriad of organisations was a necessary step, but the paralysis persisted at least until the early months of 2020, despite the ill-advised promise made just a few hours after the earthquake – whilst standing before the coffins gathered in Amatrice – that everything would return to “where it was and how it was”. Every 24 August, when mourning is observed once more in the villages that still bear the scars of radical destruction, we remember this. It is remembered above all by those who still live in the SAEs: in Arquata, Pescara del Tronto, Accumoli, Amatrice, San Pellegrino di Norcia and wherever reconstruction is still stalling. SAE stands for Emergency Housing Solutions, guaranteed for four years but now occupied for nine, prone to mould and damp, to becoming sweltering in the heat, to flooding or being punctured by hail, as happened in June in Ussita, in the Macerata area. Around two thousand households still live in the SAEs. The normalised emergency and the temporary situation becoming permanent encourage abandonment and despondency, yet even in these desolate years, they have not prevailed. I learnt this from my experience with an association of earthquake victims: people cry, they get angry, they think about giving up everything, but then they stay. Or, as soon as they can, they return.

There were only a few of us left who still held out hope for reconstruction when, in February 2020, the turning point came with the appointment of Giovanni Legnini as Special Commissioner for the 2016 Earthquake Reconstruction. Legnini, a former senator for the Democratic Party and now mayor of Chieti, realised that certain regulations would never have allowed for the reconstruction of historic centres – and the destroyed villages were all historic centres – because, in the labyrinth of more than five hundred provisions and legal texts, every restriction became a dead end. Some rules needed to be amended and others coordinated, and work finally began in that direction. No one has ever made up for those lost years, but the introduction of the Consolidated Act on Private Reconstruction following the 2016 earthquake marked the start of a way out of the paralysis. Since January 2023, FdI Senator Guido Castelli – who was mayor of Ascoli Piceno at the time of the earthquake – has been at the helm of the Commission and has been working tirelessly on regulatory reforms.

Ten years on, it is fair to say that the reconstruction is progressing. Progress is being made, above all, in the restoration and seismic retrofitting of school buildings and hospitals, in the restoration of places of worship, historic buildings and cultural heritage sites, in the repair of infrastructure, and in preventative measures, such as the commencement of work on the first European aqueduct designed to seismic standards, the so-called ‘Pescara Bypass’, which, on the border between Lazio and the Marche, is intended to ensure the safety and continuity of the water supply in that area of high seismic vulnerability. In terms of public reconstruction, between works in progress and those completed, 40 per cent of the entire programme has been achieved; however, according to data from the Commissioner’s Office, 98 per cent of the planned works have been authorised. There have also been symbolically significant milestones, such as the completion of the restoration of the Basilica of St Benedict in Norcia. In Visso, whose Diocesan Museum housed the manuscript of Giacomo Leopardi’s "L’Infinito" and an impressive collection of sacred art, the first restoration project in the historic centre – that of the Palazzo dei Priori – has just begun, whilst outside the walls, private reconstruction efforts are striving to make up for lost time.

However, there is still a long way to go. This is stated in the Special Commissioner’s own report, updated in June. Some towns have already been rebuilt, others are in the midst of ongoing work, and others are taking their first steps. Eight billion has already been paid out for private reconstruction, almost 70 per cent of which has been disbursed from 2023 to the present day. There are 23,361 authorised building sites and 14,968 completed ones; in other words, 64 per cent of the planned projects have been started. Over the past year, the report states, more than 1,300 households have returned to their homes, totalling around 2,800 beneficiaries (a 13.5 per cent increase in returns compared with 2025), but over the last three years ‘around 5,500 households have been able to return to their repaired or rebuilt homes’. A further 8,700 are still waiting: “still too many”, the report admits.

Far too many, without a doubt. And whilst the construction sites springing up all around the crater prove the doomsayers wrong, there is no denying that it is only now that reconstruction is beginning to focus on the areas affected by severe damage. Areas where the planning process has required complex geological surveys and technological solutions to ensure greater safety, without which it would be impossible to return to live there. For the seven most devastated hamlets of Arquata, the urban development plans took six years to complete, encompassing both preliminary studies and the actual design work; and in Pescara del Tronto – the hamlet where forty-eight people died under the rubble, now subject to partial relocation – it took the local council a further two years simply to draw up an amendment to the main project. There have also been many false starts in Amatrice and Accumoli, which, along with Arquata, share the grim distinction of being the ‘first crater’ – that of the dead and the villages razed to the ground. But there are also success stories, such as that of Tufo, the small hamlet of Arquata which, thanks to the solidarity and determination of its inhabitants and the committee representing them, has now seen reconstruction reach a good stage, in both the public and private sectors. A beacon for us all.

Now, at least on paper, the emergency is drawing to a close. On 5 August, the Council of Ministers, following a proposal by the Minister for Civil Protection, Nello Musumeci, decided that from 31 December, the areas affected by the 2016 earthquake will transition from a ‘state of national emergency’ to a ‘state of reconstruction’. A new name for a phase that will hopefully be just as significant, and in which the focus will not only be on completing the rebuilding of homes but also on the social, economic and demographic reconstruction of the central Apennines, through long-term planning and resources dedicated to businesses, services, employment and innovation, with specific support measures designed specifically for the municipalities in the ‘primary crater’ area. The aim is both to guarantee the ‘right to remain’ in the earthquake-affected areas and to foster conditions that make that part of the Apennines attractive to new residents and families.

In recent years, the issue of reconstruction has become intertwined with the broader ‘Apennine question’, bringing its urgency into sharp relief. It is rightly said that there is little point in rebuilding villages if they then remain deserted or populated only by the elderly or by tourists for a few months a year. Depopulation has long been the Apennines’ greatest enemy, yet the range is strategically vital to the country’s hydrogeological system, because the health of the soil, water and air we breathe throughout Italy depends on the health of the Apennines – that is, on the care of its forests, watercourses and soil. And how can we possibly ensure the upkeep of such a vital landscape if we give in to desertification, if we fail to support and incentivise the agricultural and pastoral activities that safeguard the land, and if we do not work seriously towards that ‘re-population’ which the Symbola Foundation has been advocating for years – a foundation that has never taken its attention away from the lands scarred by the earthquake?

Whilst we were waiting for the reconstruction, the woodland has swallowed up seventy per cent of the crater. It didn’t happen all of a sudden, of course, but the process is accelerating. This is serious, because the uncontrolled spread of wild woodland – fuelled by the abandonment of cultivated fields and pastures – is the reason why extreme weather events are increasingly leading to landslides, mudslides and floods, with the resulting huge repair costs.

Once again, it was the Symbola Foundation that firmly believed in a reversal of the trend and in the development of a forest-wood-energy supply chain in the crater area, which would both protect the territory and foster a significant economic and employment recovery. Its work, in collaboration with the 2016 Earthquake Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry, led to the 2024 Commission Order, which encourages the use of timber in reconstruction and identifies a model for territorial management within the crater area – the Central Apennines Laboratory – for the development of a circular economy based on the management, processing and marketing of local natural resources, such as the Apennine timber supply chains, which possess immense potential that has so far been entirely underutilised. These are good ideas that are already being put into practice because, thanks to the Next Appennino programme, platforms for the processing and promotion of local timber have already been launched in the 2016 earthquake crater area, between Arquata and Acquasanta, alongside efforts to restore ancient forest trails, which will enable controlled forest management. This is the right way forward.

Over the past ten years, the resilience of those affected by the earthquake has also been sustained by an awareness of being part of a history that stretches back a long way and which many feel they must honour. This is the spirit that drives shepherdess Silvia Bonomi, who in 2016 had only just begun the work of reviving the noble breed of Sopissane sheep (whose wool kept our ancestors warm during the freezing Sibillini winters), when the earthquake tried to dissuade her. It did not succeed, and today her work is a true example of excellence in production. It is the spirit of the many artisans, traders, farmers and livestock breeders who refused to be driven away, in Arquata as in Castelluccio di Norcia, in Acquasanta as in Amatrice or in Montegallo, where Sibillini lavender is grown. It is the spirit that drives the Civitas Appenninica’s bid to become the Capital of Culture in 2033 – a ‘widespread’ bid, led by Norcia, which speaks of the millennia-old bonds uniting hundreds of municipalities across Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo and Lazio, the very same areas affected by the 2016 earthquake, bearers of a shared and priceless historical and cultural heritage. It is the same spirit that inspired the communities which, between the 17th and 18th centuries, brought to life the magnificent “community theatres” of Central Italy – recently designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, six of which are located within the 2016 earthquake zone. To the prophets of doom, we say that there is life in the earthquake zone, and there will be more and more of it.