ROME, April 3 (Reuters) – Florence’s Uffizi Galleries said on Friday they had been hit by a cyberattack earlier this year, but denied a newspaper report that the incident caused a major security breach or theft of data.
The statement came after Corriere della Sera daily reported that the attack had emptied the Uffizi’s servers and prompted the emergency transfer of valuable jewels to the Bank of Italy.
The Uffizi said it had been targeted by a cyberattack on February 1, but added that nothing had been stolen and no information lost. It also denied that the hackers had obtained security maps or that employees’ phones had been infiltrated.
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”.
The museum said the only disruption caused by the attack was linked to the time needed to restore backups, adding that it had released a statement about the incident after it had happened.
Corriere reported that hackers had infiltrated the network of the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, had taken control of the photographic server and sent a ransom demand to the personal phone of Uffizi director Simone Verde.
The Uffizi said a full backup of the photo server existed.
It also said the closure of a section of the Palazzo Pitti and subsequent removal of valuables to the Bank of Italy was tied to renovation work planned last autumn and had nothing to do with the cyberattack.
The Uffizi added that the replacement of its surveillance cameras mentioned in the article had been recommended by the police in 2024. The upgrade was accelerated after thieves last year targeted Paris’ Louvre Museum, stealing jewels worth $102 million that are still missing, it added.
“The cameras had been in the process of being replaced for a year. The situation was not at all like the Louvre’s. The Galleries did have cameras, but they were analogue and are now digital,” the Uffizi said.
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 and Silvia Ognibene; Writing by Angelo Amante; Editing by Alvise Armellini and Alison Williams)
