Art museum in Italy shuts down due to heat wave

CAIRO - 9 August 2017: The Uffizi Gallery Art Museum in Florence, Italy was forced to shut down on Friday, August 4, following a long heat wave and failure in the museum’s air conditioning systems. This came as a preventive measure in order to protect the valuable paintings within the capital of Renaissance art.

While Florence is known as one of Italy's hottest cities, the searing temperatures, followed by an unusually long drought lasting for weeks, forced the Uffizi Gallery to take these measures. As the Washington Post reports, the cooling system thankfully remains intact enough to protect the paintings.

Examples of artwork within the Uffizi Gallery include “The Birth of Venus” and Da Vinci's “Adoration of the Magi”.

The Museum reopened on Saturday, August 5.