Apr 7, 2026

Alarm in Uffizi Gallery after hacker attack

For fear of a spectacular break-in like the one in the Louvre, numerous exhibits were brought to safety after a hacker attack on the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The museum – one of the most famous in the world with more than five million visitors a year – also had doors and emergency exits bricked up. According to a report in the Italian daily newspaper “Corriere della Sera”, the unknown perpetrators were already trying to extort some kind of ransom with the stolen data.

In many museums around the world, concerns about break-ins have been high for some time. The reason for this is the spectacular art theft at the Louvre in Paris, where part of the French crown jewels were stolen in October. According to information from investigative circles, hackers have managed to break into the internal database of the Uffizi several times since February. In addition to passwords and access data to the photo archive, they also came across precise maps and the locations of the surveillance cameras.

Ransom note sent to the museum director’s private cell phone

According to the “Corriere della Sera”, the hackers also obtained the private cell phone number of Uffizi director Simone Verde. The ransom demand was then transmitted in this way. The public prosecutor and police are now investigating. Italy’s cyber security authority is also involved. There was no official comment from Uffizi director Verde, who has headed the museum since the departure of his German predecessor Eike Schmidt in 2024.

The museum itself confirmed on Friday that there had been a hacker attack on February 1st, without giving any details. At the same time, a written statement emphasized that nothing had been damaged or stolen so far, including “absolutely no passwords.” The closure of doors was also justified by fire protection requirements. The replacement of surveillance cameras began before the attack and then accelerated.

The nearly 500-year-old Uffizi Gallery is one of the most important art collections in the world, with a focus on paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance. The inventory includes famous works by Italians such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, but also by Rembrandt and Hans Holbein. The Uffizi also includes the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens.

Jewels now in the Bank of Italy vault

According to information from the “Corriere della Sera”, jewelry from the Tesoro dei Granduchi (Treasury of the Grand Dukes) has now been taken to a vault at the Banca d’Italia, the Italian central bank, for security reasons. Several entrances and exits remain closed until further notice. There are also fears that information such as the museum’s extensive digital archive, which took years to create, will end up on the dark web.

According to the newspaper, which is based on information from investigators and museum employees, the hackers may have first penetrated the Uffizi’s IT system in August last year. This probably happened via a vulnerability in outdated software for managing the images, it said. “That was one of the few places that hadn’t yet been digitized. That’s where they came in,” the paper quoted an internal source in the museum as saying.

The Uffizi, together with the Colosseum in Rome and the grounds of the city of Pompeii, which was buried by the volcano Vesuvius, are among the most visited attractions in Italy. The Vatican museums, which are located on the grounds of the Catholic Papal States in the middle of Rome, receive even more visitors than the picture gallery in Florence. After the break-in at the Louvre, security measures for the Sistine Chapel and the other rooms were also increased there.