Italy's cultural sector on its heels but hopeful amid lockdown

Long considered a cultural powerhouse in the world, Italy has seen most of its cultural attractions shuttered along with the rest of the country's economy as it battles to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the national lockdown went into place on March 10, all of the country's more than 4,500 museums have been closed, as its many theaters, cinemas, concert halls and galleries.

For sure, some of the country's best known cultural sites are impossible to close: "Cities like Rome, Florence, and Venice are like open-air museums, available to anyone passing by," Patrizia Asproni, president of ConfCultura, an association of museum operators, told Xinhua.

But even those sites, such as the Colosseum in Rome, Ponte Vecchio in Florence or St. Mark's Square in Venice, are mostly deserted with tourism halted and residents ordered to stay at home except for a small handful of activities.

The lockdown is having severe economic impact on all aspects of the cultural world, from the country's biggest cultural institutions to its smallest.

"The floods in Venice last November cost us 3 million euros and now this lockdown has already cost us another 8 million euros in lost ticket sales," Fortunato Ortombina, the superintendent and artistic director of the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, said in an interview. "Nobody has any idea how long this will last, but the financial damage will be significant."

Ortombina vowed that La Fenice will continue to emphasize the quality of the productions it puts on stage. But he also noted that opera houses, theaters and cinemas "were among the first institutions to close under the quarantine and among the last to re-open, just because they require the audience to be so close to each other."