The health ministry has placed Rome and Rieti on red alert on Monday due to the intense heat the cities are enduring.
Six other cities – Bolzano, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Perugia and Turin – are set to join them on red alert on Tuesday as Italy bakes in its second heat wave of the summer.
Rome, Rieti, Florence, Frosinone, Latina and Perugia will also be on red alert on Wednesday, as will Bologna.
Red alert means the heat is so intense it poses a threat to healthy, active people.
Orange alert, the next notch down, indicates that the heat is a danger to fragile groups such as the elderly, the clinically vulnerable and very young children, with all advised to stay indoors.
Other people are advised not to exercise or expose themselves to the sun during the hottest hours of the day, from 11am to 4pm.
“We know that there will be temperatures above 40C or 45C,” Professor Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society, told The Guardian newspaper.
“We could get close to the record. Either way, the levels will be very high.”
The current heat wave is forecast to last at least seven days with temperatures going well above 40° Celsius, and for about two weeks in central and southern parts of Italy.
The heat warning follow’s Italy’s first heatwave of the summer on June 21, when an orange-level warning was in place in 13 cities: Ancona, Bologna, Brescia, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Pescara, Rieti, Rome, Verona, Bolzano, Campobaso and Perugia.
A heatwave is also sweeping across France, Germany, Spain and Poland.
Statistics show that there were 61,672 heat-related deaths last summer on the continent, the hottest ever recorded in Europe.
The mortality rate was highest in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.
ANSA
