Museums in Italy are offering a day of free dog-sitting to get more Italians through their doors over the next year.
The free-of-charge promotional service, organised by the Bauadvisor dog services company, will tour each city or town one day a month between now and April 2026.
Dog owners will be able to leave their pets with trained minders at the entrances of selected museums in 15 tourist hotspots.
The dogs will then be walked, fed and watered throughout the duration of their owners’ visits after a booking through the company’s website or app.
“This project means owners can enjoy culture without being separated from their pets, and dogs will suffer less stress than they would if left at home,” Dino Gasperini, director of Bauadvisor, told The Times.
The scheme went live on Sunday in Rome at four major cultural sites including the Museum of the Ara Pacis, MAXXI museum of contemporary art and the Castel Sant’Angelo.
It will take in other major sites over the next including the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
More than a third of Italian families have pets, while four in ten domestic animals are dogs, according to a report published last year by the Eurispes research company.
In 2022 the dog population in Italy amounted to approximately 8.8 million (excluding strays), making it the one of the largest in the European Union, according to the European Pet Food Industry Federation. Germany ranked highest with a dog population of approximately 10.6 million, followed then by Spain.
Mr Gasperini estimated that half of dog owners currently forego cultural activities because they do not want to leave their pets at home.
