The Imperfect Tense (Imperfetto) – Made Easy. The imperfetto is a past tense in Italian. You’ll mostly use it to: 1. Talk about things that used to happen regularly in the past (our past lives, so to speak!). We use the imperfetto for habits or repeated actions. Quando avevo 20 anni, vivevo a Londra. When I was 20, I used to live in London. 2.