Lucca has banned new ethnic restaurants within the city’s walls. Outside, students enjoyed kebabs, which are inexpensive and popular.

By RACHEL DONADIO


LUCCA, Italy - With its medieval churches, tree-lined city walls and excellent regional cuisine, Lucca seems the perfect Tuscan city. But that charm is precisely what has made it the latest battleground in a tug of war between the romantic Italy of the popular imagination and the more complex reality.

Lucca’s center-right city council recently stirred much contention, and accusations of racism, by prohibiting new ethnic food restaurants from opening within its gorgeous historical center.

This is, after all, a walled city. Many shops have been in the same families for generations. Some locals proudly trace their lineage, or imagined lineage, back to the Etruscans, who founded Lucca before the Romans took over about 180 B.C. With so much history, change comes hard.

Lucca is“very closed,”said Rogda Gok, a native of Turkey and the co-owner of Mesopotamia, a kebab restaurant, in the heart of the historical center.“In Istanbul there’s other food, like German and Italian, it’s no problem,”she added.“But here in Lucca, they only want Luccan food.”

In this deeply conservative city, there are already four kebab houses, testaments to Italy’s growing immigrant population and the fact that many Italians, especially young ones, like eating non-Italian food. Offering kebabs at $5, the restaurants are also a bargain in difficult times.

Under the new law, these four can stay, but the banning of new ethnic and fast-food restaurants within the city walls has struck many here as contrary to the rules of free-market capitalism and the notion that Italy can offer more than visions of its long-dead past.

Yet those dreamy visions of Tuscany are exactly what draw the half-million tourists a year that the city relies on to survive. Lucca is not the only city caught in this struggle. Siena and other Tuscan cities have also banned fast food in their historical centers.

In Lucca, the kebab ban has also raised alarm.“It’s shameful,”said Renata Barbonchielli, a Lucca resident, as she stood outside a bakery downtown.“Of course there should be kebabs. We have to have openness here.”

Filippo Candelise, a Lucca City Council member who handles economic development, defended the new regulation as essential for Lucca’s future.“We absolutely reject the‘racist’label,”he said.“We simply want to preserve our cultural and historical identity.”

Indeed, visitors from countries that pride themselves on openness do not necessarily bring the same perspective to Lucca.“An American wants to find a typical‘osteria,’not a Chinese restaurant,”Mr. Candelise said.

Others found it strange that the city would ban fast food yet allow shops selling underwear and plastic knickknacks.

“It’s hard to stay an oasis,”said Roberto Isola, the owner of the Delicatezze gourmet food shop.

The ban on ethnic and fast food will not do much good, he said.“I think it’s too late.”