Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Black Death arrived in Italy in October 1347, when 12 Genoese ships docked at Messina in Sicily. Sicily and the Italian Peninsula were the first territories of Catholic Western Europe to be struck by the plague.
Boccaccio described dead bodies thrown into the streets and animals that fell dead after coming near the corpses. He recorded the emergence of the becchini, grave diggers recruited from the city's poorest beggars who charged large sums to bury the dead. He later claimed 100,000 people died in Florence, a figure that exceeds the city's total population but reflects the scale of the devastation.
Agnolo di Tura described how bodies were thrown into holes across Siena and how no one wept, because everyone believed they would soon die as well. He recorded that the painters Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Pietro Lorenzetti died during the outbreak. He claimed that when the plague finally left Siena, only 8 people remained alive in the city.
The quarantine regulations that Italian city-states introduced during and after the Black Death are recognized as the foundation of modern quarantine law. Port cities developed ship quarantine, holding arriving vessels offshore for assessment, while inland cities created hospital quarantine for travellers from affected regions. These practices spread across all of Europe from the second half of the 14th century onward.
The Black Death caused a rapid collapse of social order in Florence. The chronicler Matteo Villani described the poor eating luxury food, dressing in the clothes of dead aristocrats, and marrying without regard to class or status. The becchini, grave diggers recruited from the city's poorest beggars, grew powerful as the crisis deepened and charged enormous sums to bury the dead.
Venice was struck by the plague in April 1348, already overcrowded with famine refugees from the countryside and still recovering from an earthquake in January. Between 25 and 30 people were buried daily in the cemetery near the Rialto. By July 1348, the city council had banned Venetians from leaving, threatening loss of position and standing for anyone who fled.