The article describes the response of Italy during the first year and half of the COVID-19 pandemic, from its outbreak until Autumn 2021, focusing on the public health measures response. The scope of the article is to describe the public health measures adopted as well as their legal basis and the main legal problems that such measures raised, to identify the mistakes, the administrative problems and the inefficiencies that affected the Italian response. Section I provides a chronicle of the main events, from a legal and administrative perspective, that characterized the Italian response to COVID-19. Section II offers a synthetic picture of the regulatory context in which the measures were adopted, of the new legal environment set up to deal with the pandemic and discusses the main legal problems and issues that characterized the management of the pandemic. The Final Section briefly describes the main legal problems and lessons for the future that the COVID-19 pandemic may provide.