ROME: The local government of Treviso, in northern Italy, has ordered the city’s Chinese restaurants to remove red lanterns from their windows because they look too “oriental”.

“It’s spoiling the appearance of the city,” the head of the council’s town planning department, Sergio Marton, told Corriere della Sera daily. “The Chinese put up all sorts of stuff: lanterns, lions, dragons, there’s even one (establishment) that did its whole front in oriental style.”

Treviso, just outside Venice in the north-eastern Veneto region, is run by the populist, anti-immigrant Northern League. The League is strongly represented in the northern third of the country, an area which the party calls Padania.

“Treviso is a city of Veneto and Padania, it’s certainly not an oriental city,” deputy mayor Giancarlo Gentilini said, justifying the order to take down the lanterns within 10 days. The order states that the three restaurants in question had made no formal request to the council to put up their lanterns.

“From now on we’ll be making regular checks and after the removal of the lanterns, we’ll be looking at all other decorations around the entrances of the restaurants,” Marton warned.—Reuters