Florence's Uffizi Gallery: the most visited museum in Italy
Don't be put off by the immense queue in front of the entrance: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is the most visited museum in Italy. Every year its rich and ancient art collections attract millions of tourists to the city, and you have to be patient to get in, but its rooms preserve an artistic heritage that-in number and value-is unparalleled in our country and in the world.
Construction of the Uffizi began in the mid-1500s on the initiative of Cosimo I de Medici, who commissioned the celebrated painter, architect and art historian Giorgio Vasari to design what was initially conceived as a residence: the rooms of the Medici family on the upper floor, the works of art owned by them on the lower floor. Vasari was also responsible for the construction of a very long Corridor-known as the Vasariano-that, crossing the city from above and the Arno River above Ponte Vecchio, connects Palazzo Vecchio (at the time the seat of government) to Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, the family's former home.
Over the centuries, the Gallery's collection of works gradually expanded, eventually opening its doors to the public in 1769. The rest is history: within the spaces of the Uffizi today are the most important and extensive testimonies of the Italian Renaissance and the artistic history of the Belpaese. The boundless production of Giotto and Cimabue, the works of Masaccio, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca, but also of Michelangelo (the famous Statue of David is in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, but his Tondo Doni is a Mannerist masterpiece), Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and even Leonardo da Vinci. The jewels in the crown-and probably the most famous and visited works in the museum, however-are Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Primavera, eternal icons of Italian Renaissance art. The museum's works are arranged chronologically along the Gallery's floor plan, so visitors can take away with them an accurate snapshot of how artistic tastes and trends have changed and evolved over the centuries.
The Uffizi Gallery is an essential stop on a visit to Florence, on par with a tour of the leather shops-a renowned Florentine tradition-a lunch of Tuscan schiacciata at the Antico Vinaio and a climb to Brunelleschi's dome.For centuries, the city has been the nerve center of the cultural life of not only a state but of an entire world, and one cannot leave it without first taking a close look at its artistic history.
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