Plans to build a mosque near Italy's famous Leaning Tower of Pisa have come under fire from campaigners.
Local politician and one of the protest's leaders, Gianluca Gambini, claimed most Pisans are against the mosque and warned it could become a centre of radicalisation. The building has received provisional planning permission from the city council but a petition against it has gathered 1,800 signatures.
The campaigners have called for a referendum on the issue which, if granted, would be the first time an Italian city has held a vote on the building of a new mosque.
Gambini said: "According to a recent poll, 57 per cent of Pisans are against the mosque.
"It's not just that it would be built in the wrong location, just 400 metres from the Leaning Tower, but also because people know that mosques are places where there is a risk of radicalisation," said the politician from Silvio Berlusconi's centre-Right Forza Italia party.
Questions over the €4.5 million funding have also been raised. Magdi Cristiano Allam, an Egyptian-born politician and former Muslim who converted to Catholicism, claimed the mosque was being built by the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, which "is ideologically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamic movement."
The mayor of Pisa has defended the project and said that blocking it would contravene the freedom of worship enshrined in the Italian constitution.
The tower in Pisa is one of Italy's most iconic landmarks. Built between the 11th and 13th centuries when Pisa was a powerful city, it tilts dramatically and had reached an angle of 5.5 degrees before construction work restored the lean to 3.99 degrees.
It shares the city's iconinc Piazza del Duomo with the cathedral and the Pisa Baptistry.
