italian museums offer dog-sitting services to visitors

 

A number of Italian museums offer visitors dog-sitting services, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI in Rome. Led by the company Bauadvisor, the sitters look after the visitors’ dogs so they can roam around and visit the exhibitions with ease. So far, the company is active in 290 museums across 53 Italian cities. On January 10th, 2025, the team announces their initiative where they are set to host 15 events in 15 cities across Italy and offer visitors of the major museums free dog-sitting services.

 

The city tours hope to boost the number of pet-owning visitors to the museums. It also finds a solution to museums that don’t allow dogs, and pets in general, inside the cultural institutions. While Bauadvisor goes on city tours for their dog-sitting services, the company still offers them to visitors of several Italian museums. These institutions include the Museo Egizio in Turin, Museo Ducati in Bologna, Gli Uffizi in Florence, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan, Galleria D’Italia in Naples, and Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Verona.

italian museums dog-sitting
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice | image courtesy of Peggy Guggenheim Collection

 

 

Rome as the first stop of the city tours

 

Out of the tour, the dog-sitting services at Italian museums cost 10 euros per hour with no duration limits. Pet owners must first reserve on the company’s site to make sure that an available sitter can accommodate their dogs. In a report by The Times, there were 40 visitors who used the platform’s dog-sitting services on its inauguration day, and that so far, around 800 owners in Mantua book the service when they visit museums in the city.

 

Bauadvisor states on their site that they’re a company dedicated to the four-legged friends. Aside from dog-sitting visitors’ pets in Italian museums, they can also organize events for the pets and their owners. These can be through tours, aperitifs, lunches, dinners, and weekends as well as meetups, guided tours, meetings, seminars, fairs, exhibitions, and even book and film presentations. The first leg of their Italian city tours begins on January 12th, 2025, in front of MAXXI Museum, the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, and the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.

italian museums dog-sitting
MAXXI Museum in Rome designed by Zaha Hadid | image courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

italian museums dog-sitting
The Tribune in the Gli Uffizi Museum in Florence | image courtesy of Gallerie degli Uffizi

museo egizio, gli uffizi, MAXXI and other italian museums offer visitors dog-sitting services
Gallery of the Kings in Museo Egizio | photo by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of OMA

picture of a dog
Italian museums offer visitors dog-sitting services | image courtesy of Bauadvisor

 

 

project info:

 

name: Dog-sitting services in Italian museums

company: Bauadvisor | @bauadvisor