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Great Discoveries "Personal Tour Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Uffizi Gallery. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each items artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about the Uffizi, the world's first museum, now housing the world's greatest collection of Renaissance art. It contains works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo, and many other important Italian and European artists from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Informative description, photo's, building diagram, sample audio tracks and more.
During the mid 16th century the government of the Grand Duke Cosimo I, de Medici was expanding so rapidly that it was outgrowing the capacity of the next-door Palazzo Vecchio, which had recently been enlarged to more than twice its original size. Cosimo I commissioned Giorgio Vasari to build additional space to house the offices of the city’s magistrates and the ever-expanding number of bureaucrats. Vasari began construction on the building in 1559 and Bernardo Buontalenti and Alfonso Parigi finally finished it in 1585, some twenty-six years later. The name Uffizi derives from the Italian word uffici, meaning offices.
The palace of the Uffizi is a long, U-shaped structure, with almost a theatrical enclosure that extends as far as the north bank of the Arno River. Building it involved sacrificing the glorious old church of San Piero Scheraggio, which was partly demolished and partly incorporated into the new edifice. On the ground floor, Vasari built lofty arcades supported by alternating Doric columns and pilasters and above them a loggia, which originally had no special use. It was Cosimo’s son and successor, Duke Francesco I de’ Medici, who decided that the loggia should have the present-day function of a gallery.
Vasari created the building in the shape of a U by creating a second floor room, or loggia, that connects the two wings of the Uffizi at the north bank of the Arno River. The U-shape of the building created a central open area, which became known as the Piazza degli Uffizi. The buildings design creates a symbolic axis that emanates from the riverfront loggia and ties the Uffizi’s Piazza, or square, with that of the larger area of the Piazza della Signoria.
Upon Francesco’s death in 1587, his brother Ferdinando I di Medici, renounced the office of Cardinal and became the next Grand Duke. By now, the Medici, the absolute rulers of the Florence and Tuscany had married into some of the wealthiest families in Europe, enabling them to continue enriching their gallery. Fernando had the family’s classical statues from the Villa Medici in Rome transferred to Florence and he soon added the finest pieces from the Medici Armory and a superb collection of mathematical instruments.
The Gallery benefited from other substantial acquisitions in the 17th century, notably that of the wife of Ferdinando II de Medici, Vittoria della Rovere, whose dowry contained the immense patrimony of her grandfather, Federico the Duke of Urbino, which included precious works by both Raphael and Titian. Another important acquisition that enriched the Medici collections was Cardinal Leopold’s bequest to his nephew Cosmo III de Medici, who built new rooms in order to accommodate it, and constructed a new and more monumental entrance to the Uffizi.
Cosimo III’s daughter Anna Marie Ludovica, the last of the Medici and the widow of the Elector Palatine, added works by German and Flemish masters. Anna Maria died in 1737, but prior to her death she bequeathed, through a testament known as the family pact, that all of the art treasures gathered by the powerful dynasty would forever belong to the city of Florence and that they would be at the disposal of visitors from the entire world. Thanks to this testament, it was possible to recover many of the works of art stolen during World War II and also during the Napoleonic era, even though, unfortunately, many masterpieces remain in France.
This is the single busiest building in Italy, hosting over one and a half million visitors a year, so you can anticipate long lines, or queues, on most days except for the dead of winter. Advance ticket sales are available and it is strongly recommended that they be purchased. The time difference between the advanced ticket line and the regular line can be as much as three hours, depending on the day.
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In
1584, the Grand Duke Francesco I commissioned the architect Bernardo
Buontalenti to build a room that he envisioned as a precious casket
for displaying the best pieces of his family’s art collection.
Buontalenti built an octagonal shaped room, the Tribune, into which
the Grand Duke placed ancient statues, paintings by Florentine and
Tuscan masters and bronzes, ivories, miniatures, coins, medals,
and many other precious objects. The Tribune soon became famous
the world over and visitors came from afar to admire the masterpieces
displayed. The Tribune fully embodied the principles of a modern
museum and as such, it is considered to be the world’s first
museum.
for your first sample before playing the second sample, or you
will not hear it.
