ROME, April 3 (Reuters) – Florence’s Uffizi Galleries were hit by a serious cyberattack earlier in the year that prompted emergency measures including the transfer of valuable jewels to the Bank of Italy, Corriere della Sera reported on Friday.
The Uffizi Galleries display some of Italy’s most celebrated artwork, including Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and “Primavera” paintings, along with Michelangelo’s “Doni Tondo”.
A spokesperson for the Uffizi – Italy’s second most visited museum generating around 60 million euros ($69 million) a year in revenue – did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Neither Italy’s Culture Ministry nor the police central press office responded to a request for comment.
The Corriere report said the Uffizi Galleries director Simone Verde declined to comment. It said the institution had acknowledged administrative systems being affected at the time, without elaborating.
The Corriere report said hackers infiltrated the museum network in late January or early February, gaining access to servers of the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens.
The attackers allegedly emptied some of the servers and sent a ransom demand directly to the personal phone of Verde, it said.
According to Corriere, the hackers obtained entry codes, passwords, alarm systems and internal maps.
It said the most valuable items from the Treasury of the Grand Dukes – housed in Palazzo Pitti, the Medici family’s former residence – were moved to the central bank as a precaution, while some doors and emergency exits were sealed.
The official Uffizi website says that to allow for extraordinary maintenance work, the Treasury of the Grand Dukes at Palazzo Pitti will be closed from February 3 until further notice, without giving more details.
The hackers are also alleged to have stolen the full digital archive of the photographic department, containing images and documents built up over decades, the report said.
Last year, thieves targeted Paris’ Louvre Museum, stealing jewels worth $102 million that are still missing.
In March, three paintings by French masters Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse were stolen from a museum in northern Italy.
($1 = 0.8668 euros)
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Writing by Angelo Amante; Editing by Alvise Armellini and Alison Williams)
