KEY POINTS:
The name fits the place. Cittadella, a town 64km inland from Venice, is a true citadel, one of only three cities in Europe which preserve their medieval walls intact.
The historic centre is enclosed in a perfect circle of high 13th century masonry, with battlements, towers, entrance gates at the four points of the compass, and a moat.
But while medieval walls give a powerful sense of protection and make for excellent picture postcards, they no longer keep unwanted people out. And that is very much on Italians' minds, less than a year after Romania joined them in the European Union.
Cittadella has become the first town in Italy to lay down rules on who may not live in it - namely the poor, the unemployed and the homeless.
This is Italy's second spasm of xenophobia in a month. At the beginning of November, after the nasty mugging-murder of a middle-class housewife allegedly by a Roma youth on the outskirts of Rome, the capital's mayor, Walter Veltroni, forced through a diktat giving the central government the power to expel foreigners for reasons of "public security".
All foreigners, including those from the EU, were covered by the new decree; no trial was required, only a decision by the local prefect that the people in question were a menace.
For a couple of weeks the expulsion idea was all the rage. Veltroni is a former communist, but in no time the post-Fascists had taken up the cry, demanding that tens of thousands of foreigners be summarily booted out.
At least 200,000 should be expelled from Rome alone, according to Gianfranco Fini, the former deputy prime minister under Silvio Berlusconi and the acceptable face of Italy's far right.
In practice, mass expulsions were quickly ruled out, with Pope Benedict one of a chorus of voices warning Italy not to go down the road of racism and paranoia. So far those expelled nationwide number in the low hundreds.
But now, from the opposite end of the country, comes a different idea: don't let the immigrants into your citadel-city to begin with.
"The people feel insecure," says Cittadella's mayor, Massimo Bitonci, explaining the rules he has imposed on foreigners who might fancy moving to his town.
An accountant by profession, with an open countenance, a reassuring smile and friendly manners, 42-year-old Bitonci has, for the past three weeks, been collecting a huge number of headlines and television appearances for a man who is the mayor of a pretty little town with a population of barely 20,000.
It all began on November 16 when his office published an ordinance spelling out the rules of residence in Cittadella for Italians, non-Italian members of the EU, and others. The novelty resided in the idea that the mayor of a small town might assert the right to say who could live there.
Cittadella has never in its history had that right. When the walls were built in the 13th century, it was already a fraction of the city of Padua, 20 miles to the south. From 1405 it came under the sway of Venice - for centuries one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe.
But Bitonci is demanding that right now. He belongs to the Northern League, the party led by the demagogic Umberto Bossi, whose original slogan was Roma ladrona! (Big thief Rome!) and which campaigned for the secession of northern Italy from the south.
Now, in a few pages laden with legal cavils, the mayor has spelled out that foreigners coming from within the EU have the right to live in Cittadella only if they have no criminal record, are in regular work with an income per family member of at least €5000 ($9,536) per year, and have a home conforming to standards set down by the town.
For the first time in 800 years, Cittadella is making an attempt to live up to its name.
Reaction has been swift and harsh. "A decidedly racist and discriminatory measure which violates civil and constitutional rights," said the Government's Minister for Social Solidarity, Paolo Ferrero.
The rules evoked "a climate of medieval obscurantism", said Andrea Martella, a centre-left MP from Venice. "This ordinance is merely an act of propaganda which takes us back centuries, with the aggravating factor that, like a dangerous virus, it is poised to spread to other towns governed by the centre-right and the Northern League."
Events quickly proved Martella right. When I visited Bitonci in his gleaming modernised town hall within Cittadella's walls, he was aglow with the applause of other Northern League mayors.
"The idea I launched was immediately taken up by the mayors of many other small towns like ours in the region," he said. "So far 40 mayors from Veneto and Lombardy have phoned in to say they support me."
The townspeople, he said, were right behind him. "There is a great popular consensus on this proposal, which I consider to be an obvious, almost banal thing: in any democratic state a foreigner can move from one place to another but he should have a minimum of financial wherewithal, a respectable place to live, and above all he should not have a criminal record."
Racism had nothing to do with it, he insisted. "This is a small town, and until a few years ago there were hardly any immigrants here. There were one or two Moroccans who had been here for decades. They were well integrated; they had families; some were married to Italians without any problem. But this is a difficult moment."
Italy's new mood dates from the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the EU in January. "Now we have 15 new applications for residency per week, 60 per month, 600 per year, and 80 per cent of them foreign," said the mayor.
"It's a real invasion. The great majority are Romanian: of 1423 immigrants who are regular residents, 416 are Romanian. And I'm only talking about people who are legally resident: there are another 40 or 50 per cent who are here illegally, and they certainly do not have proper places to live. And all the other towns around here have the same problem."
The immigrants, he claimed, had brought a crime wave. "This used to be an island of happiness. Thirty years ago here in the countryside, people didn't even lock their doors at night. There were problems connected to drugs but it was very limited. But there has been an increase in crimes against property, especially in recent months."
As I walked the elegant lanes of Cittadella's ancient centre, "island of happiness" didn't seem too bad a description for it now: signs of crime and degradation were hard to spot.
A visitor unaware of the controversy would conclude that this was a wealthy, complacent little place, with all the charms of small Italian towns, the trattorias and osterias, the boutiques offering panetone and liqueur chocolates.
If the locals really do back Bitonci's ordinance, they are coy about admitting it.
"I'd really rather not talk about it," said one woman.
"Not interested," said a bearded man, who then called back: "I don't think the ordinance is going to work, anyway."
However, Italy's very low birth rate means that its economy is dependent on a constant flow of new arrivals. A large proportion of immigrants work in the illegal sector and live in lousy accommodation - but not from choice.
Within living memory, millions of Italians were poor immigrants in North and South America.
And they had to contend with exactly the sort of attitudes Bitonci is encouraging as they struggled to make good, far from home.
- Independent
