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Another popular Florence art museum is infested with ticks

The Local Italy
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Another popular Florence art museum is infested with ticks
Florence's Museo Novecento is also infested with ticks. Photo: Sailko/Wikimedia

A museum in Florence was forced to call in pest control earlier this week after the building was found to be infested with ticks...and cockroaches.

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The €1,830 clean-up at Museo Novecento, on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, came just a couple of weeks after an employee at the Tuscan city’s famous Uffizi Gallery was hospitalized due to a tick-bite.

Councillor Tomasso Grassi said the parasites were found on the museum’s first and second floor, while cockroaches were found in the basement.

“We carried out a technical survey and found a major infestation of these insects,” he told La Repubblica.

“On this basis we needed to proceed urgently with disinfection treatment to ensure the building is clean and to protect the health of workers and visitors.”

The museum, which houses around 300 works dedicated to 20th century Italian art, opened just two years ago.

Ticks, which are relatively common in northern Italy, were also found in the Uffizi earlier this month.

As with Museo Novecento, it is thought the ticks found their way into the building by hitching a ride on the pigeons which crowd Florence's central squares and sometimes land on the museums' open windows.

Infected ticks can cause Lyme disease and TBE (tick-born encephalitis) in humans, both of which can be fatal in a small proportion of cases. In Italy, the risk of TBE is low. 

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