Italy begins a staged end to a nationwide lockdown due to the spread of the coronavirus in Milan, Italy. Reuters

Stir-crazy Italians will be free to stroll and visit relatives for the first time in nine weeks on Monday as Europe's hardest-hit country eases back the world's longest nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

Four million people — an estimated 72 per cent of them men — will return to their construction sites and factories as the economically and emotionally shattered country tries to get back to work.

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Restaurants that have managed to survive Italy's most disastrous crisis in generations will reopen for takeaway service.

'Moment of responsibility'

Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus emerged in December, led the world with an unprecedented lockdown on January 23 that lasted 76 days.

A man wearing a protective mask passes by the Coliseum in Rome amid fear of Covid-19 epidemic. File photo/AFP

Weeks later Italy followed suit, becoming the first Western democracy to shut down virtually everything in the face of an illness that has now officially killed 28,884 -- the most in Europe -- and some fear thousands more.

The lives of Italians began closing in around them as it became increasingly apparent that the first batch of infections in provinces around Milan were spiralling out of control.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte began by putting a quarter of the population in the northern industrial heartland on lockdown on March 8.

The sudden measure frightened many — fearful of being locked in together with the gathering threat — into fleeing to less affected regions further south.

The danger of the virus spreading with them and incapacitating the south's less developed health care system forced Conte to announce a nationwide lockdown on March 9.

"Today is our moment of responsibility," Conte told the nation. "We cannot let our guard down."

The official death toll was then 724.

More waves of restrictions followed as hundreds began dying each day.

Almost everything except for pharmacies and grocery stores was shuttered across the Mediterranean country of 60 million on March 12.

First patients of COVID-19 start to be taken in the new intensive care unit built in Milan, Italy. File photo/AP

Conte's final roll of the dice involved closing all non-essential factories on March 22.

Italy's highest single toll — 969 — was reported five days later.

'Worried about reopening'

The economic toll of all those shutdowns has been historic.

Italy's economy — the eurozone's third-largest last year — is expected to shrink more than in any year since the global depression of the 1930s.

Half of the workforce is receiving state support and the same number told a top pollster that they were afraid of becoming unemployed.

And some of those who are out of a job already say they do not entirely trust in Conte's ability to safely navigate the nation out of peril.

Pallbearers pull the coffin of a deceased person for a funeral ceremony into the cemetery of Grassobbio, Lombardy. AFP

"I am worried about the reopening. The authorities seem very undecided about how to proceed," 37-year-old Davide Napoleoni told AFP.

Conte's popularity has jumped along with that of most of other world leaders grappling with the pandemic thanks to a rally around the flag effect.

But a Demos poll conducted at the end of April found some of Conte's lustre fading.

Confidence in his government has slipped by eight percentage points to a still-strong 63 percent since March.

Agence France-Presse