Pro-Kurdish demonstrators accused police of acting like Turkish security forces, saying they were being assaulted and corralled inside Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo monument during a protest at Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit on Monday.
"We are virtually being held prisoners at Castel Sant Angelo, not just us but also the journalists who are here," the Kurdistan Network in Italy's spokesman Alessio Arconzo told Adnkronos news agency.
"The police are preventing us from moving, they have surrounded us and are threatening us with immediate arrest if we unfurl banners," he said.
"We are being treated as if we were in Turkey," Arconzo said, calling the situation "surreal and embarrassing".
Arconzo claimed that police had "violently charged" protesters, injuring a 50-year-old man in the head. A second person was taken to a police station to be identified, Arconzo said.
The demonstrators are protesting the deadly offensive launched in January by the Turkish military and allied Ankara-backed Syrian rebel forces in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin against Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia.
Castel Sant'Angelo is outide the 'green zone' in central Rome where authorities took the unprecedented step of banning any protests during Erdogan's 24-hour visit that began late Sunday and ends on Monday evening.
A total of 3,500 police have been deployed for Erdogan's visit amid a security lockdown.
