In a small town nestled in the Apennine Mountains, businesses are closed and activity is scarce- so much that silence resounds through the streets. It looks more like two o’clock in the morning than two o’clock in the afternoon. Where are the Cagliesi? Resting.
In a long-standing tradition in Cagli and many small towns across Italy, the town rests from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. In la pausa, Italian for “to pause,” businesses close their doors and employees head home to enjoy food and rest with their families.

Ask a Cagliese what la pausa is, and it will elicit many responses. The common thread that everyone seems to agree on is that la pausa is certainly a time of rest.

Eros Santini, the owner of Tabaccheria Edicola, the tobacco shop in the main piazza, sees his pausa as a “moment of relax.”

“I shut down the shop, close the door; I go home to have lunch and to have freedom so I can relax,” he said. “Here [at the shop], there is always something to do; put cigarettes away, listen to people. When I’m home, I relax.”Santini’s shop opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 1 p.m. He reopens at 3:30 p.m., working as late as 8 p.m. With such a long workday, Santini said, he believes that the pause is a necessity.

“We need it. It is natural. When you are tired. When you are working from morning until 1 p.m., you are very tired. You are angry.”

For someone who lives in a culture that does not practice a midday break and stresses a time-is-money concept, it may be difficult to fathom how a business can sustain itself. Cagli and its people do not run on a typical 9-to-5 American work schedule. Since the townspeople and the stores are on matching patterns, Santini said he does not believe that this really affects the bottom dollar of the business.

“People know when I am open,” he said.
Santini added that he is less interested in the money than upholding the tradition. Because of this, he said that he would not consider staying open for pausa.

“I wouldn’t even think about it!”

While shops close during la pausa, caffés and bars remain open all day, offering an alternative place to rest.
“We have not considered the break,” said Mimmi Bartoli, a long-time resident of Cagli and owner of Caffé Commercio. “[We] are in a small town and have our usual clients that come here for lunch.”

She believes that it is important to have a good relationship with clients. While the caffé does not close during the time of la pausa, Bartoli and her employees rotate times for breaks, so each has time to pause. Other caffés in the piazza remain open as well, but because of a strong base of loyal customers in each establishment, there is a sense of cooperation between caffés and businesses in general.

“Each have its own clients, so there is no competition,” she said.
Santini agreed that competition doesn’t really exist between businesses in Cagli.

“If I do not have one copy of one magazine, I will say [to the customer] ‘OK, you can go to my friend and try him.”

While store owners such as Santini work hard to maintain the pausa tradition, the custom of a midday break is beginning to fade out in many of the larger cities in Italy. Recently, the government of a fellow member of the European Union, Spain, abolished the siesta to establish a uniform eight-hour workday.

Could the same happen to Italy? Francesco Mansi, the director of the Atrium Institute of Italian Language & Culture, is not so quick to rule out the possibility.

“It is possible. Anything that happens in one tiny country in Europe affects you sooner or later. If you ask me was it the right thing to do, [taking out the siesta in Spain]? I will say no.”

Could the same happen to Italy? Francesco Mansi, the director of the Atrium Institute of Italian Language & Culture, is not so quick to rule out the possibility.

“It is possible. Anything that happens in one tiny country in Europe affects you sooner or later. If you ask me was it the right thing to do, [taking out the siesta in Spain]? I will say no.”

Already some stores are staying open during pausa. Conad is the only large business in Cagli to do so. The supermarket giant launched its alternative hours three years ago in Cagli and hasn’t looked back since. When it began to open six days of the week and close on Sundays, not a lot of customers shopped during the new hours.
“At first people did not know that we were open,” said Angelo Fedrighelli, the director of Conad in Cagli. “Once word got out, new customers started to come.”

Conad caters to a different clientele during these hours, those who are only able to shop during their breaks because of extended afternoon work hours.

For one Sunday last August, Conad’s doors opened with permission of the Municipality of Cagli.
“We are hoping to do the same again this year, but have all the Sundays of August open,” said Fedrighelli.
Even with Conad’s doors open, Mansi remains optimistic that the pausa will prevail.

“It’s fading away, unfortunately, in big cities, but the pausa still survives in these small center towns like Cagli.”

Mansi said he believes strongly in the power of the pausa.

“It is equal to reflection,” he said. “Everybody should take a rest. If you do not reflect, if you do not think, I think you become a robot.”

Mansi also sees the pausa time, not only as a time of rest, but as an important time for family and loved ones to gather together and “discuss the first part of their day.”

Like Mansi, Bartoli said she believes pausa is important in one’s life.

“It is better to be dead than to not have la pausa.”

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