A new theatre backed by George Clooney is giving hope to some, but the city where thousands were left homeless is still a building site

As the world’s most powerful leaders converged on the earthquake-ravaged central Italian city of L’Aquila for the G8 summit in July 2009, a more discreet gathering was about to steal the limelight. San Demetrio ne’ Vestini, a village about 13km away welcomed its own illustrious visitor when George Clooney flew in from his Lake Como home to inaugurate the construction of a new theatre to replace one destroyed in nearby Casentino earlier that year.

The Hollywood actor’s support helped to boost donations, and the restoration of the theatre has become one of the few sources of civic pride in an area that is still a long way from a full recovery.

“He probably doesn’t realise just how much his support has contributed to this small miracle,” said Giancarlo Gentilucci, who runs the theatre, called Spazio Nobelperlapace, with his wife, Tiziana Irti.

The 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck the central region of Abruzzo on 6 April 2009 killed 309 people, left 70,000 homeless and devastated around 56 villages in Italy’s mountainous heart.

Some of the G8 leaders fulfilled their promises to donate funds to the reconstruction, but the theatre, which hosts shows, concerts and other events throughout the year, has played a pivotal role in helping rebuild the tattered social fabric.

“It’s become a necessity for people who use it,” said Irti. “They say it’s their safety anchor, their point of reference. Many came out of their isolation; for others it’s been a way to express themselves. Many friendships have been formed, and across the generations.”

As L’Aquila marks the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, the bells of Santa Maria del Suffragio church in the city’s historic centre chimed 309 times at 3.32am on Saturday – the time the tremor hit a decade ago – to remember the dead. In his homily, Archbishop Giuseppe Petrocchi stressed that the most important thing to restore was “the community and its citizens”. He added: “This must march in parallel with the construction of buildings.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Clooney chats to a police officer in l’Aquila before visiting San Demetrio ne’ Vestini. Photograph: Claudio Lattanzio/EPA

A torchlight procession, attended by prime minister Giuseppe Conte, was held to recall those who died in L’Aquila but also the 297 killed in an earthquake in nearby Amatrice in 2016 and others across the country over the past two decades.

“We have a duty not to forget, but above all we have a duty to be constantly striving to relaunch this territory,” said Conte.

Today, the historic centre of L’Aquila, which was home to around 20,000 people before the earthquake, is a tale of two cities: one still emerging from the rubble, the other resiliently trying to return to normal. The few inhabitants who have gone back to their homes over the past couple of years live beside cranes, diggers and dusty roads. Meticulously restructured buildings stand opposite ones still clad in scaffolding. By day, workmen help by patronising the handful of bars, restaurants and shops that have reopened. By night, those businesses are kept afloat by students from L’Aquila’s university.

“Even though we’re surrounded by scaffolding, building sites and very few people, when you open the door to your house and you’re inside, you feel at home, and that’s enough,” said Paola Inverardi, the university’s rector. A thriving university town before the disaster, L’Aquila lost 55 students in the quake. Eight perished when their hall of residence collapsed. The others had been living in modern, but structurally weak, buildings just outside the walled medieval city.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The devastation in 2009. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

It is difficult to find out how many people are now living in the centre, with some guessing “a few hundred” and others “around 1,000”. Inverardi, who was dean of the science faculty at the time of the earthquake, moved back into her home last year. In the months after the tragedy she lived in a tent in her sister’s garden before moving to one of 19 “new towns” rapidly built across the area. She stayed there for less than two years before moving into a repaired building on the outskirts of the city.

To say that rebuilding has been slow would be an understatement. Work in the historic centre only began to gather pace in 2013 after problems with mismanagement, political wrangling, stifling bureaucracy and corruption and probes into contractors’ links with the mafia. Then there was the exploitation: the earthquake was disastrous for the people of L’Aquila but a golden opportunity for the construction sector. Even before the dead had been named, two high-profile entrepreneurs, Pierfrancesco Gagliardi and his brother-in-law, Francesco Piscicelli, were overheard in a wiretapped phone call bragging about contracts the disaster could bring their way.

“It was a huge business,” said Angelo Imperiale, who grew up in L’Aquila and is now a PhD student at Groningen University in the Netherlands. Imperiale has written a thesis on the emergency response to the earthquake and the impact it had on survivors and the environment. “As the area became heavily militarised, pushing people away from their homes and preventing them from even accessing their belongings, the red zones became a huge cake divided among influential building entrepreneurs, both local and national.”

Some 2,000 families still live in prefab housing scattered across the mountains, and another 3,000 are in the new towns. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s anti-seismic housing initiative was originally hailed an “Italian miracle”, but over time the buildings’ defects started to show, with former L’Aquila mayor Massimo Cialente suggesting it would be better to demolish the projects due to the structural weaknesses and high maintenance costs.

The haphazard emergency response also damaged social connections: those not housed locally were put up in hotels along the Adriatic coast for almost two years. Berlusconi said at the time that it would be “a nice break” for them.

“There was no systematic approach to engaging people,” added Imperiale. “And today there are many still living in temporary, unsafe housing, who just want to get back to normal life.”

But those seeking to restore a sense of normality have been irritated by the heavy focus on L’Aquila’s problems in some of the media’s anniversary coverage. “They spoke about us in a way that pushed us back 10 years,” said Inverardi. “OK, there is still a lot to do, but over the past decade, we as a community have been trying to exist, to imagine our future and work towards that.”