L'Imperfetto
The other half of the Italian past. While passato prossimo and passato remoto describe what happened, the imperfetto describes the world it happened in — backgrounds, habits, ongoing states, the weather, the time of day, the way someone looked. Half of every Italian past-tense paragraph lives in it.
The imperfetto is the past tense for everything that wasn’t a single event.
Where the passato prossimo and the passato remoto describe completed actions — I ate, she went out, he closed the door — the imperfetto describes the world those actions happened in. Backgrounds. Habits. The way things were. Weather, age, mood, the slow ticking of an afternoon. It is the tense of the camera lingering before the action starts.
If you only know one Italian past tense, you will sound like a tourist. If you know the passato prossimo and the imperfetto, you will pass.
Forms
The imperfetto is one of the most regular tenses in Italian. There is one set of endings, and almost every verb plays nicely.
| Person | -are verbs | -ere verbs | -ire verbs |
|---|---|---|---|
| io | parlavo | credevo | finivo |
| tu | parlavi | credevi | finivi |
| lui/lei | parlava | credeva | finiva |
| noi | parlavamo | credevamo | finivamo |
| voi | parlavate | credevate | finivate |
| loro | parlavano | credevano | finivano |
Take the infinitive, drop the final -re, and add the endings: -vo, -vi, -va, -vamo, -vate, -vano.
The handful of irregulars
Italian has fewer imperfetto irregulars than French. Memorise these:
| Verb | Forms |
|---|---|
| essere | ero, eri, era, eravamo, eravate, erano |
| fare | facevo, facevi, faceva, facevamo, facevate, facevano (from old facere) |
| dire | dicevo, dicevi, diceva, dicevamo, dicevate, dicevano (from old dicere) |
| bere | bevevo, bevevi, beveva, bevevamo, bevevate, bevevano (from old bevere) |
The pattern for fare, dire, bere is that they use their archaic Latin-rooted forms as the imperfetto stem — predictable once you know it.
When to use it
There are four classic uses. Most learners memorise them in this order.
1. Background description
The setting before something happens. Weather, time, place, mood, what people looked like.
Era notte. Il vento soffiava tra gli alberi. It was night. The wind was blowing through the trees.
2. Habits and repeated actions
Things that used to happen. English used to and would (in habit-sense) almost always translate to imperfetto.
Quando ero bambino, andavo al mare ogni estate. When I was a child, I used to go to the seaside every summer.
3. Ongoing actions interrupted by another action
A long action in progress, suddenly broken by a discrete event. The long thing is imperfetto. The breaking event is passato prossimo (or passato remoto in literary text).
Dormivo quando il telefono ha squillato. I was sleeping when the phone rang.
This is the most distinctive imperfetto function in narrative.
4. States of being and mind
Age, feelings, beliefs, physical conditions, ongoing emotional states.
Aveva dieci anni. Era felice. He was ten. He was happy.
The pair: imperfetto + passato prossimo/remoto
This is the central skill. Italian past-tense paragraphs constantly alternate between the two registers.
Imperfetto describes the world. Passato prossimo / passato remoto moves it.
Watch what happens in this constructed example:
Il cielo era grigio e pioveva. Maria leggeva un libro nella sua poltrona. Sembrava stanca. Improvvisamente, qualcuno ha bussato alla porta.
The sky was grey and it was raining. Maria was reading a book in her armchair. She seemed tired. Suddenly, someone knocked at the door.
Three sentences of imperfetto set the scene. One passato prossimo breaks it. This rhythm — long establishment, brief disruption — is the structural pattern of Italian narrative prose.
Collodi’s Pinocchio uses this exact pattern from the first page. The workshop was cold, the wood was on the workbench, Master Cherry was working — and then Pinocchio’s voice spoke for the first time. Setting in imperfetto; event in passato.
Quirks worth knowing
Stare + gerund (the progressive)
For an action specifically happening right now in the past, Italian uses stare in imperfetto + the gerund:
Stavo mangiando quando è arrivato. I was eating when he arrived.
This is the most precise progressive form. Mangiavo quando è arrivato also works (imperfetto alone implies “was -ing”), but stavo mangiando is more emphatic.
Polite imperfetto
In service interactions, you’ll hear:
Volevo un caffè, per favore. I wanted a coffee, please.
Saying voglio (present, I want) is fine but slightly blunt. Volevo (imperfetto, literally I was wanting) is the polite register. This is one of the few places imperfetto doesn’t refer to past time.
Era una volta — the fairy-tale opener
C’era una volta (once upon a time) is the standard fairy-tale opening, and it’s an imperfetto. Every Italian children’s book uses it. Pinocchio opens with it. Reading any folk-tale collection will burn the construction in fast.
What you don’t need to do
You don’t need to translate imperfetto into one English form. It maps to was/were doing, used to do, sometimes did, sometimes would do — depending on context. Don’t try to fit it into one English bucket.
You don’t need to decide between imperfetto and passato prossimo through grammar charts. The split is semantic, not formal. After enough reading, the question was this a discrete event or a state of the world? becomes intuitive. Until then, when in doubt, ask: can I add “used to” or “was -ing” in English? If yes, imperfetto. If you’d say did or has done, passato prossimo.
Where you’ll meet it in the library
The imperfetto is everywhere. Notable books:
- Pinocchio (A1) — Collodi opens with c’era una volta and the imperfetto carries the entire descriptive layer of the novel. Every workshop scene, every fairy’s appearance, every long countryside passage is in imperfetto.
- Il Decameron (A2) — Boccaccio’s frame story establishes the world (the plague, the church, the gathering) entirely in imperfetto before the action begins. Each of the hundred tales then follows the same imperfetto-then-passato pattern.
Where you'll see this in books.
C'era una volta un pezzo di legno. Non era un legno di lusso, ma un semplice pezzo da catasta. Faceva freddo nella bottega di Mastro Ciliegia.
Geppetto era un uomo povero. Aveva i capelli bianchi. Viveva in una piccola casa con una sola stanza. Quando lavorava, cantava una vecchia canzone.
A Firenze, nel 1348, c'era una grande peste. Le strade erano vuote. La gente moriva ogni giorno. Sette giovani donne erano nella chiesa di Santa Maria Novella quando hanno deciso di fuggire.