It's been less than eight weeks since Italy's first case of coronavirus was detected. Life is unrecognisable now.

Across Italy, the cobbled lanes and once bustling piazzas look like ghost towns. A nation of 60 million people is in lockdown.

But in family homes across the country, Italians are adapting to a new normal.

Stuck inside their homes, they are looking after each other.

And making the most of a difficult situation, spending more time with family.

Children are attending school over video conference, waving "ciao" to friends and teachers each morning.

While adults are finding new places to work, on kitchen tables and couches.

Socialising is ingrained in Italian culture. Aperitifs with friends are still enjoyed, but now over an iPad.

And exercise is done in whatever space is available — in suburban backyards and inner-city courtyards.

Meanwhile for those who still have to venture outside, to queue for the supermarket or go to the office, the threat of coronavirus is ever present.

'Today I became scared'

Confined to her home for the past three weeks, Catriona Wallace has watched on with an uneasy calm as an invisible menace has run riot across northern Italy.

But it was not until the day of our interview that she first felt fear.

"I'm not a person who has an instinct to be scared about things like this, but I have to say today ... I became scared," Catriona says.

Unable to travel to Italy, Foreign Correspondent used Skype interviews and mobile phone video to go inside the nation's coronavirus lockdown to see how Italians are adjusting.

Overlooking the peaceful Lake Maggiore in the village of Sesto Calende, about 50 kilometres north of Milan, Catriona's home might have felt safely removed from the chaos of Italy's coronavirus frontline.

But the virus has struck a little too close for comfort. There is a random element to the infection that has unsettled everyone.

A close friend, who lives only 200 metres down the road, was hospitalised and rushed into intensive care with serious respiratory symptoms. He is 50 years old and had no underlying medical concerns.

"It really hit home to me because he woke up on Monday morning with the symptoms and by Tuesday he was in hospital," she says.

Only days earlier he had asked Catriona and her family around for a social engagement, an invitation they only missed because they were out walking the dog.

"It's a bit like being on house arrest, because we basically do not leave the confines of our property now."

Neighbourly invitations have now ceased and seem almost to belong to a different time, before Catriona's world shrunk to the fence boundary.

An Australian who has made Italy her home for the past 17 years, Catriona is among the 60 million people now living in a national lockdown, consigned to isolation in their homes as Italy's Government tries desperately to halt the coronavirus contagion.

Like most Italians, Catriona didn't see the lockdown coming. It happened slowly at first, with minor restrictions on movement and large public gatherings.

Her boys' sport was cancelled; then schools were closed and she was forced to run her Milan-based software business from her home.

Steadily, the restrictions ratcheted up.

"We'd wake up and there are new measures announced overnight restricting more and more movement," Catriona says.

Soon even small gatherings of people were banned and Italians were told to keep at least a metre away from each other.

"I would never have dreamed that we would be in this situation two to three weeks ago, I would never have imagined it because it is quite simply unprecedented. I have never seen anything like it."

At coronavirus ground zero

Northern Italy, where Catriona and her family live, has rapidly become the new global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic.

Caught unprepared by the lethal speed of the outbreak, hospitals in Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna were quickly stretched to breaking point and beyond.

The Italian Government decided the only way to stem the explosion of new cases in the north was to radically restrict movement.

On February 22 it declared the province of Lodi, in Lombardy, a "red zone" and placed the area and its 50,000 occupants under lockdown.

On March 8 the whole of northern Italy followed. Then a day later the entire country was told the earliest they could resume ordinary life would be April 3.

Schools, universities, restaurants, cafes and churches have now been closed. Only critical services like supermarkets, pharmacies, doctors' surgeries, banks, public transport and factories making essential goods remain open, with a skeleton staff.

With no reliable treatments and a vaccine at least 12 months away, Italians are being asked to wait it out at home.

"I have to say it's a bit like being on house arrest because we basically do not leave the confines of our property now — and we haven't done so for two weeks," says Catriona.

For families across Italy, the boundaries between work, school and home life have quickly been erased.

Catriona now works from home — what Italians call "smart working" — running video conferences with staff from the kitchen table while also home-schooling her boys Sebastian, 13, and Cailin, 10.

"If you go to the hospital because you have a temperature they will send you away. They will not admit you."

After weeks cooped up inside, Sebastian finds it "depressing" that he can't go to sport and see his friends. Cailin admits he's also feeling "cabin fever" too.

But there are also positives to the lockup, like seeing dad — who is currently unable to travel for his manufacturing business — more often. Family closeness has been an unexpected silver lining for Catriona too.

"I've never been so connected with my kids," she says.

"I haven't spent this much time with them for a long time and it's really nice because we talk a lot more and have a lot more to talk about."

Above the empty streets

The streets outside the central Milan apartment of Emma Alberici — the cousin of the ABC's Emma Alberici — are normally clogged with cars and lined with shoppers browsing the exclusive fashion boutiques.

Today they are eerily quiet.

Milan's bars, cafes and restaurants are shuttered. Street life in the piazzas has been silenced; tourists are nowhere to be seen. Centuries-old churches not closed since the days of the plague are locked up.

Meanwhile, inside Emma's apartment it's a rare hive of activity for a weekday.

The television news is on as her partner Ariel dices onions and cooks pasta sauce, clanging a saucepan on the hob.

There's been music and dancing in the living room to pass the hours locked away from the outside world. Ariel has made a tart with wholemeal buckwheat.

Milan's Emma Alberici is the chief financial officer at a large pharmaceutical company, which has been deemed essential and is still open.

Most of the staff have been told to take their annual leave or work at home but Emma is still going into the office every day.

Not that the office is anything like it once was before Italy's strict social-distancing guidelines came into force.

Face-to-face meetings have been banned and those employees who are still at work keep themselves locked away in their own offices.

"We have asked people not to wander from one office to another, in fact our hashtags are 'I stay in my own office' and 'I use the phone'."

Emma would usually commute on public transport — these days she drives her car. The trips into work come with certain dangers, not just for herself.

Emma has to take extra precautions to protect a new and particularly vulnerable member of her household — her 90-year-old mother Maria.

Maria normally lives alone a couple of hours away, in the Ligurian coastal town of Loano, but moved in with Emi and Ariel just before the city went into lockdown.

Given the susceptibility of the elderly to COVID-19, it's a responsibility that weighs on Emma as she continues to venture out of the apartment each day.

"I am quite concerned about anything that might compromise her immune system because she is very, very frail, as would be expected at the age of 90," she says.

Just before the coronavirus outbreak, Maria, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, had a serious medical complication when she was hospitalised for a week with a bout of influenza.

Even then, before the deluge of COVID-19 patients hit the emergency wards, medical staff urged Emma to get her mother out of the hospital to avoid catching another virus.

"The last thing that will ever be missing is food. Italians will never go without food. We can do without medication and other products, but not food."

Keeping Maria safe has meant wearing a face mask, adhering to strict social distancing and constantly washing her hands. Emma is confident her routine will hold the virus at bay.

But the concern for anyone in northern Italy who falls ill right now is what kind of medical care they can expect — for themselves or their loved ones — from the vastly overburdened health system.

"If you call a doctor, they will not visit you," Emma says.

"They just give you a script over the phone. In fact if you go to the hospital because you have a temperature they will send you away. They will not admit you."

Doctors are asking all Italians to assume they have the virus and only present at emergency wards if they have serious trouble breathing. The priority now is to keep healthcare workers safe.

Leaving home is forbidden without legitimate justification and anyone who ventures outside must carry an official document stating their reason for doing so.

Police are issuing on-the-spot fines and even detaining those who defy the new rules.

Emma's brother Moreno was fined 600 euros ($1,100) for being outside washing his car. It wasn't on the list of accepted reasons for leaving the house.

Rare trips out of the house

After three weeks in the apartment, the short walk to the local supermarket has become a rare pleasure for Ariel.

Even the parks have been closed after police found people were using Milan's green spaces as a place to gather with friends.

But many shops have long queues stretching hundreds of metres, drawn out by Italians' adherence to social-distancing rules.

Only a few people are allowed inside the store at a time.

After weeks in lockdown, it's the simple pleasures that Ariel misses, like going to the park or a cafe with friends. "You come to appreciate your freedom," he says.

Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has assured Italians that food will not run out. The country has so far managed to escape the rush on supermarkets that have emptied shelves across Australia.

"We have not had any kind of shortages," says Ariel.

"The last thing that will ever be missing is food. Italians will never go without food. We can do without medication and other products, but not food."

And there's been no shortage of toilet paper either. "In Italy we use a bidet", Emma jokes.

Childhood in the time of coronavirus

For seven-year-old Zoe Balsotti, school still starts at 9:00am on a video conference call with her teacher and classmates.

She taps in a code to join the call and little faces soon pop up on the screen, wriggling and fidgeting in front of their webcams.

Zoe has her "Classroom Campfire" lessons for the day on the iPad.

It has activities to complete, English study and three homework lessons.

But Zoe admits at times it's harder to stay focused on schoolwork at home, and sometimes, she says, "I'll play instead".

Zoe lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her mother and father in Milan. Life has been disrupted, but she is quickly learning to adapt to their new reality.

Some everyday routines like handwashing have taken on greater importance. Zoe has written handwashing instructions out on a piece of paper and taped them to the bathroom door.

It reminds members of the Balsotti household that they must wash their hands for 60 seconds when coming in from outside.

"Per pipi" (a wee) hands must be washed for 30 seconds and "per cacca" (a poo) for 40 seconds. "With soap!" the note adds.

Zoe isn't normally allowed to watch the evening news but her parents have made an exception lately, sitting beside her as together they try to comprehend the scale of the crisis unfolding around them.

No-one in her immediate family has contracted coronavirus, but Zoe understands that many doctors have fallen ill. She's concerned about her friend Bianca's father, who is a doctor.

"I want to say that I am quite worried, I always have these thoughts in my head that Lombardy is the most affected at the moment," Zoe tells Livia.

"I always have this thought: will we overcome it or maybe we won't overcome it. I'm confused."

While typical for a family of three in Milan, the Balsottis' 100-square-metre apartment might seem like tight quarters for many Australian families to share 24 hours a day.

"Let's see in another two weeks' time how we feel. I miss my colleagues, actually."

It must now make do as a classroom for Zoe and workplace for dad, Alessandro, and mum, Ilaria.

They consider themselves lucky to have an outdoor balcony where they can enjoy coffee after a family lunch, basking in the spring sun and the fresh air with their cat, and a courtyard downstairs where they can pass around a volleyball.

Already they are finding ways to adapt to the social isolation.

Instead of a walk down to the shops for brioche on a Sunday morning, Ilaria cooks pancakes at home.

Cafes and bars are closed but bottle shops are still open, so aperitifs are enjoyed around the kitchen table with friends joining in over Skype, the typically gregarious Italians conversing through a blaring iPad speaker.

Alessandro, who works for a bank, is "smart working" and has set up his home office with a laptop, two monitors and a printer crammed onto a small table in the kitchen.

Just metres away, Ilaria, who works in marketing for a chemical company, is spread out on the kitchen table where she conducts video calls before clearing the space for family meals.

"Sometimes it's tough but we can manage," says Ilaria.

"Business is not as usual but I think we are some of the lucky ones because at least we can work from home. Let's see in another two weeks' time how we feel. I miss my colleagues, actually."

On a Skype call from opposite sides of the globe, Zoe catches up with her best friend Livia, who recently moved to Sydney. They are both keen to discuss the topic preoccupying the entire world.

Livia has a question — has Zoe's cat come down with coronavirus?

"No, for cats and dogs and for our furry friends, the coronavirus isn't a problem," Zoe informs her.

"The disease comes from bats but for bats, it wasn't a problem. They don't get sick. They have it inside them and it doesn't have an effect. They can play."

Soon Livia asks the question many parents are pondering too: "Do you know when you will be able to leave home and go back to school?"

Zoe says she "doesn't have the faintest idea".

"It's not like you have a special app that you can use and say, 'Hey Siri, tell me when I can return to school'," says Livia.

Watch Foreign Correspondent's 'Life in the Time of Corona' at 8:00pm tonight on ABC TV and iview.

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