Dressed in black bomber jackets and black T-shirts, the fascists surged into a main piazza ringed by colonnaded palazzos and pavement cafes. Confronting them were dozens of riot police armed with batons and shields.

Scuffles broke out as the modern-day Italian Blackshirts, from a far-Right party called Forza Nuova (New Force), tried to push their way further into the town. But the police forced them back, shoving them with their shields as the demonstrators chanted slogans from the time of Mussolini and gave stiff-armed salutes.

The confrontation happened in Macerata, a quiet provincial town tucked away in the hills of the eastern Marche region, touted by property agents and travel supplements as the new Tuscany.

Overlooked by the snow-capped Apennines and surrounded by rolling countryside, it rarely intrudes into the minds of Italians – until last weekend, when a 28-year-old Italian man went on the rampage.

Luca Traini allegedly used a Glock pistol to randomly target African migrants living in the town, shooting six of them before surrendering himself to police beneath a fascist-era war memorial.

The shooting spree was reportedly in revenge for the death a few days before of an 18-year-old white girl whose body was cut up and stuffed into two suitcases, allegedly by a 28-year-old Nigerian drug dealer named Innocent Oseghale.