ROME — In a sort of coronavirus edition of “Undercover Boss,” the mayor of the northern Italian town of Asti this past week surreptitiously inspected supermarkets for the illegal sale of inessential products.

“Naturally, I have to go in disguise,” Mayor Maurizio Rasero said in a Facebook video. “So gone with the glasses, gone with the beard.” Reappearing un-monocled and clean-shaven, he put on a baseball cap and a mask, naturally. “Here we go.”

The incognito mission was just the latest tactic Italian mayors have employed to get unruly residents to obey lockdown measures as Italy became a center of the global epidemic.

They have launched insult-armed drones. They have personally confronted scofflaws on the streets. They have mocked women for getting their hair done because no one would see them in their closed caskets. They have asked all their dog-walking citizens if their pets had prostate problems.