In the coming months, Bizzarri says, her aim is just to keep her head above water. Da Lucia restaurant was started by her great grandmother in 1938, and closed only once during World War II when the city was bombed. It shut down for the second time last March when Italy went into lockdown. Bizzarri says all she wants now is to continue her great-grandmother’s legacy.
“The big fear was that I would have to close, after 82 years. So now, I just hope to be open for the next few years.”
‘The magic of theater is lost’
German business owners are experiencing similar pains. In Germany, a strict lockdown is already in place with only essential shops allowed to open. Christmas markets, an intrinsic part of the German Christmas, have been broadly banned, and the popular Gluhwein stalls ordered to close. Berlin’s famous theater, the Friedrichstadt-Palast, has been dark since last March.