Bookstores, and almost nothing else, are open again along desolate canals of Venice. Restaurants and hotels remain shut and cafes once packed with tourists sit empty.

But for two days a week, customers can browse for books, so long as they wear a mask, disinfect their hands before shopping, and stay more than 6 feet apart. To comply, the city’s MarcoPolo bookstore has asked customers to enter one at a time in the morning or schedule a half-hour appointment for the afternoon.

“It’s useless to think about sales,” said its co-owner, Claudio Moretti. “The reason we are opening is to make the bookstore live again, to give our clients a bit of freedom.”

For a look at how hard it is to press “play” on a Western economy still battling the new coronavirus, turn to Europe, and to Italy, which is painstakingly freeing its shops and small businesses in stages, easing a continentwide lockdown that has kept nearly half a billion people at home.

Nation by nation, and in some cases, storefront by storefront, health authorities in the European Union are selecting when and where commercial life can breathe again, in tiny gasps. Each new category of retail allowed to function presents a real-time experiment for what coming weeks could look like as parts of the U.S. attempt to follow.