Florence

The state's attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy's landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorized commercial use.

Italian activists stuck photographs of climate change devastation to a glass panel protecting Botticelli's famed Birth of Venus painting at the Uffizi museum in Florence on Feb. 13.

Just four at a time, visitors soon will be allowed access to a long-hidden space inside Florence's Medici Chapel where delicate charcoal drawings sketched on the walls have been attributed by some experts to Michelangelo.

The narrow, arched room below the Medici Chapels Museum in Florence has some suspiciously virtuosic doodles on the walls.

The director of Florence's Uffizi Galleries called on Aug. 23 for stiff penalties against vandals who spray-painted graffiti on exterior columns of the Vasari Corridor connecting the famed museum to the Boboli Gardens.

Hours later, Italy's Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said the presumed vandals have been identified by Carabinieri police. He did not identify the suspects.

A 15-year-old Greek girl was slapped with a 160-euro fine for trying to write on the medieval Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, Italy.

The girl was on holiday in the Tuscan city with her family and, according to Italian media, tried to write a sentence with her name, reading "Lina is perfect."

A Spanish tourist died after falling debris from the ceiling of the Santa Croce Basilica in Florence struck him, the BNT reported.

The church is one of the most famous in the city since the Renaissance.

Chianti Classico, the wine that is most associated with Italy and Tuscany that claims to be the oldest fixed wine region of the world, is 300 years old since last Saturday.

The 'Power and Pathos' exhibition displayed at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence on March 14 is an apotheosis of ancient Greek sculpture. Most of the ancient works show the body beautiful in the ancient Greek world.