PAVIA, Italy — Renowned for its universities and a celebrated Renaissance monastery, this Lombardy town about 25 miles south of Milan has in recent years earned another, more dubious, distinction: the gambling capital of Italy.

Slot machines and video lottery terminals, known as V.L.T.s, can be found all over in coffee bars and tobacco shops, gas stations, mom-and-pop shops and shopping malls, not to mention 13 dedicated gambling halls. By some counts, there is one slot machine or V.L.T. for every 104 of the city’s 68,300 residents.

Critics blame the concentration of the machines for an increase in chronic gambling — and debt, bankruptcies, depression, domestic violence and broken homes — recorded by social service workers in Pavia.

But in many ways, Pavia is merely the most extreme example of the spread of gambling throughout Italy since lawmakers significantly relaxed regulation of the gambling industry a decade ago.