The sale of all alcohol, including the spritzer, has been banned in a desperate attempt to thwart a wave of drunkenness sweeping the town.

The ban applies from 8pm on Wednesday to Sunday morning in all bars, shops and supermarkets in Padua town centre. Such draconian measures have aroused the ire of revellers and bar owners, but have pleased older Paduans who hope to avoid nightly encounters with drunks and the mess they leave.

The spritzer — a blend of white wine and sparkling mineral water in a fluted glass, with a twist of lemon — is the traditional aperitif in the city.

At the weekend thousands of people staged a mock funeral mourning “the death of the spritzer”. But Flavio Zanontano, the centre-left Mayor, was unrepentant. “We have tried everything, and a blanket ban is the only way,” he said.

Although the spritzer was thought of as a relatively harmless low alcohol drink, bars had increasingly fortified it with slugs of gin and other spirits such as Campari or Aperol, a spirit-based blend of bitter orange and herbs invented in Padua.

Bar owners were also using prosecco — sparkling white wine — instead of still white wine, the Mayor said. The resulting cocktail was 25 per cent proof instead of 5 per cent. “If you go to a bar in the town centre you find waiters pouring out so-called spritzers in a kind of production line from mid- afternoon onwards,” Signor Zanontano said. “It has got out of hand.”

Padua, near Venice, one of Europe’s oldest university towns, has a sizeable student population, swelled in summer by tourists attracted to frescoes by Giotto and Mantegna.

At the mock funeral, the “mourners” stopped at each bar, weeping and beating their breasts to the sound of drumbeats. In addition to the main coffin, borrowed from an undertaker, the “pallbearers” carried twenty more coffins made of black polystyrene, accompanied by candles.

Some residents welcomed the ban, however. “Normally we make our way home after an evening out through carpet of broken glass and puddles of vomit, with young people of both sexes urinating on street corners and in doorways,” one said.

The experience debunks the myth that Mediterranean cultures, where wine is drunk in moderation, avoid the drunkenness that plagues city centres in northern Europe. Authorities in Rome and Bologna have cracked down on drinking, imposing early closing times and forcing bar owners to use plastic beakers instead of glasses.

Signor Zanontano said that he had tried persuading bars to serve “old-fashioned spritzers” and to close at midnight. The ban is supported by the local church authorities and the police, who said that anyone violating it would be arrested.

The bar owners have got up a petition demanding a referendum asking: “Do you want to live in a lively city or a rest home?” They said that they had two thousand signatures, and that a counter-petition by the residents association had only few hundred.

Ruggero Pieruz, a council official, said that the ban could be revoked “if the situation improves”, but he gave warning that if it did not, “we will take even tougher measures”.

A VINTAGE REFRESHMENT

• A descendant of the once-popular Victorian “hock and seltzer”, a spritzer is a chilled drink made with white wine and soda water or sparkling mineral water

• An ideal summer drink, its name derives from the German spritzen, meaning to “spray or sprinkle”, a reference to the method of squirting soda water into the wine to dilute it

• In some parts of Europe lemonade is used instead of mineral water, or cider instead of wine. In the United States some non-alcoholic carbonated fruit juices are marketed as spritzers

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