Italian police detained 271 young people during a second day of unrest in Milan on October 18, authorities said, after cost-of-living demonstrations degenerated into running clashes with officers, store looting, and vandalism in the city center. The violence followed similar clashes a day earlier across northern Italy and echoed mass unrest over rising living costs in neighboring France.
Second day of violence in Milan
Police in riot gear fired tear gas and water cannon as several hundred hooded protesters set bins ablaze and looted stores, including sports retailers Decathlon and Arc'teryx and phone store Vodafone in the city center, according to TV footage cited by Reuters. Of those taken to police stations, 32 were arrested, including 23 minors and 13 foreign nationals, police said on October 19. A further 28 people were reported to judicial authorities.
The unrest followed similar clashes on October 17 in northern cities including Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Bergamo and Turin, where 28 protesters were arrested, according to a police report released on October 18. The demonstrations had begun as protests against poor public services and rising costs — anger over fuel prices, taxes, low wages and strained services — before a fringe of masked youths turned to stone-throwing, smashed shopfronts and arson, forcing crowds away from Piazza del Duomo and a luxury shopping arcade normally packed with visitors.
Meloni calls urgent security meeting
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who faces an election in 2027, condemned the violence and announced a government meeting on October 19 to discuss how to address the situation. Writing on the social platform X, she drew a sharp line between the right to demonstrate and the destruction that followed: "The right to protest is guaranteed. However, destroying our cities is not a right," she wrote, describing the perpetrators as "thugs who use protests to spread chaos, attack security forces, and hold entire cities hostage."
Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who is center-left, acknowledged the roots of the demonstrations but warned the escalation marked something new. "What happened here is what we are seeing across many cities globally," Sala said. "I am deeply worried because this is a new phenomenon rooted in an international context."
Echoes of unrest across France
The disturbances mirrored unrest in neighboring France, where hundreds of thousands of people angered by rising living costs and declining public services took to the streets on October 17 in some of the country's most violent protests in years. The parallel flare-ups on both sides of the Alps have sharpened fears of a wider wave of cost-of-living anger sweeping across Europe — demonstrations that begin peacefully over household budgets and end with riot police, tear gas and shattered shop windows.
The takeaway: Italy's government now faces a twin test — addressing the genuine cost-of-living grievances behind the protests while containing a violent fringe that has shown it can turn a city center into a battlefield in a matter of hours. Monday's security meeting will signal how Rome intends to answer both.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Volatile Reaction (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0