I own an apartment in Esquilino, Rome, and my building had been scheduled for an exterior renovation before Covid-19 hit. My architect sent me a request for an urgent consultation. The project is big, and I have to pay for 20.5 percent of it, so I had an urgent reason to get there.

I bought a ticket from New York's JFK airport to Rome Fiumicino at the beginning of May. That flight got cancelled. When I called Alitalia they said I could enter Italy from Paris, so they moved me to an Air France flight on a different day. Then that flight was cancelled.