Rioters have looted shops, smashed windows and fought police in the centre of Milan for a second consecutive night, with more than 200 people taken to police stations.
Groups of mostly black-clad, hooded youths moved at speed between Piazza San Babila, the central via Torino, Piazza del Duomo and corso Vittorio Emanuele on the evening of October 18, according to the Italian agency Adnkronos.
They ransacked a supermarket and several shops, and broke windows with stones at commercial premises including the La Rinascente department store on Piazza del Duomo and a fast-food outlet in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
Bus shelters, pavement café tables, parked cars and vehicles caught in traffic were damaged. Officers from the Police and the Carabinieri were pelted with stones, chairs and firecrackers, and replied with tear gas and water cannon in the area of the Royal Palace.
The disorder reached the forecourt of the cathedral itself, where the main doors on the façade were temporarily closed. Church staff steered worshippers and tourists attending evening services towards the side doors next to the archbishop’s palace.
Police took more than 200 young people to stations in the city, around 80 per cent of them minors, Italian news agency ANSA reported. About 160 had been held by 7pm.
The violence began on October 17 on the fringes of an authorised march called by the Italia in Piazza movement against rising prices, fuel costs and the tax burden, with further protests in Turin, Bologna, Bergamo and Brescia.
Police put turnout in Milan at about 5,000 and said 141 officers were injured on that first day, according to figures cited by Sky TG24. Some 28 people were arrested, among them 12 minors.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the violence, saying that demonstrating was a right but putting cities to fire and sword was not, and accused organised groups of using lawful protests as cover to seek confrontation.
Milan’s centre-left mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said the reasons behind the protests were understandable though the attacks on officers and the damage to the city were not. The Italian Government called a public order meeting in Rome for October 19.
The unrest follows a wider wave of cost-of-living protests across the European Union, including riots in France on October 17 and clashes in Brussels on October 9 during a national strike against budget cuts.
The Italian Government, which scrapped road tax for a year in September as fuel prices rose, has also asked Brussels for more room under the EU budget rules, arguing that higher inflation had to be taken into account.
