Florence's Uffizi shuts galleries as air-conditioning fails in record heat

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence has restricted entry to its galleries after an air-conditioning system failure, The Local Italy reported Friday. With temperatures expected to exceed 35 degrees Celsius across Tuscany this weekend, the museum—Italy's most visited—has become temporarily uninhabitable for both artworks and visitors during the peak of the summer tourist season. The failure comes as at least 193 million Europeans face temperatures above 35°C, according to AFP calculations cited by The Local Italy on Saturday.

The timing places Florence's cultural institutions under acute strain. The Uffizi, which draws roughly two million visitors annually, relies on climate control not merely for visitor comfort but for the preservation of Renaissance masterworks housed in galleries that were never designed for such extremes. The failure underscores a vulnerability that foreign heritage observers have begun to track: the collision between mass tourism, aging infrastructure and climate stress in Europe's most visited art cities.