Silvia Romano lowered her mask briefly to display a broad smile after she stepped off an Italian government plane at Rome-Ciampino International Airport.
She hugged her mother and other family members, and touched elbows instead of shaking hands with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.
Romano, 24, was working as a volunteer with an Italian humanitarian group when she was abducted in November 2018 during an attack by gunman in Kenya.
Romano was taken to the Italian Embassy in Mogadishu after she was freed.
Italian news reports said the abductors eventually passed her into the hands of militants linked to Somalia’s al-Shabab extremists.
