Staff at many Italian tourist sites, including the Doge’s Palace in Venice and Rome’s Maxxi art gallery, are to hold a one-day strike next week against government budget cuts, organisers said.

The Closed Doors protest on Friday will include museums, libraries, theatres, historic parks and archaeological sites run by local authorities in some of Italy’s most visited cities like Florence, Genoa, Rome and Venice.

“Art is Italy’s core business and by cutting culture the government risks stealing the country’s future,” Andrea Ranieri of the National Association of Italian Communes, which is organising the strike, said at a press conference.

Protest organisers said the government is cutting a total of €280 million in culture budgets over the next three years, including €58 million a year from the culture ministry alone.

“The government sees art as the cherry on the cake in Italy. If you pick it off, you can still eat the cake. But art is the cake,” said Marco Magnifico, deputy head of the Italian Environment Fund, or FAI, a non-governmental group.