Uffizi Gallery
Only 20 minute walk divide Opera Boutique B&B from the Uffizi Gallery.
The Gallery in 2019 attracted almost 4.400.000 million visitors (+ 6.1% compared to 2018).
These numbers emphasize once again the great success of one of the most loved and visited museums in the world for its extraordinary collections of paintings and ancient statues.
The origins
The building, commissioned by Cosimo I de 'Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was designed to house the "uffizi", that is, the administrative and judicial offices of Florence.
Cosimo entrusted the enterprise to his trusted artist, the Arezzo painter and architect Giorgio Vasari.
Vasari designed a building with a portico with Doric columns with an elegant and severe look at the same time, founded "on the river and almost in the air".
The construction from 1560 of the Magistrature building, the original name of the complex, involved the demolition and rehabilitation of the Baldracca district.
Il Rione della baldracca
In this neighborhood stood the tavern of the same name where patrons could have found certain services offered precisely by the prostitutes.
The disembowelments of this infamous neighborhood full of taverns and brothels, however, spared the ancient Romanesque church of San Pier Scheraggio.
The church was the seat of the assemblies of the free municipality before the construction of the Palazzo della Signoria.
The sacred building, incorporated in the Vasari factory, retained its destination for worship until the 1700s.
Vasari brilliantly solved the problems imposed by limited space by adopting solutions with a great scenographic impact.
La serliana sull’Arno, elemento architettonico composto dal grande arco centrale e dalle due aperture contigue, andava così a inquadrare il piazzale porticato.
Becoming in factthe new economic and political forum in addition to the ancient civic space par excellence, Piazza della Signoria.
Uffizi Gallery - its treasures
The Uffizi Gallery, as we admire it today, is full of collections of paintings of the fourteenth and Renaissance and contains some absolute masterpieces of art of all time.
Just remember, among others, l'Adorazione di Magi by Gentile da Fabriano, Battaglia di San Romano by Paolo Uccello, Madonna Rucellai by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Maestà di S. Trìnita by Cimabue, the Giotto's Madonna d’Ognissanti, Portraits of the Dukes of Urbino by Piero della Francesca.
Furthermore the Trittico Portinari by Hugo van der Goes, Primavera and Venere by Botticelli , l'Adorazione dei Magi by Leonardo, Tondo Doni by Michelangelo, Madonna del Cardellino by Raffaello, Venere d’Urbino di by Tiziano, Bacco by Caravaggio.
The Vasari corridor
Taking a further step back, in March 1565, on the occasion of the wedding of Francesco I and Giovanna of Austria, Giorgio Vasari had a corridor built, later called the Vasari Corridor.
The corridor served as a link between the Medici offices in the current Gallery and the majestic Palazzo Pitti, then the residence of the same family.
The corridor was made even more unique, enriching the walls with works by Guido Reni, dei Carracci, by Artemisia Gentileschi.
The presence of important collections of German, Dutch and Flemish painters, including Dürer, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez, and the famous collection of artists' self-portraits further enhances this already enchanting place.
An innovative architectural structure that appears as a "suspended" passageway. The kilometer-long corridor crosses the Arno on the Ponte Vecchio, surprising the visitor's eye for the scenic view of the river.
The Medici period
Then, entering today's Via Guicciardini, cut the buildings to look out onto Santa Felicita from which you can see the interior of the Church itself, just as the Medici saw it.
From here, in fact, they witnessed the various activities that were held there, thanks to a wall with a window that still overlooks what was once the private stage of the family.
The first museum layout of the Uffizi Gallery on the top floor of the complex is due to Francesco I, Grand Duke from 1574 to 1587.
The east arm of the loggia housed a series of ancient statues and busts. Finally, along the corridor there was the Tribuna, an octagonal room designed by Buontalenti, intended to house the treasures of the Medici collections.
The gallery after the Medici
In 1737, the death without heirs of the Grand Duke Gian Gastone sanctioned the decline of the Medici principality.
The assembly of European powers had ordered the transfer of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to Francesco Stefano di Lorena, consort of the heir to the imperial throne, Maria Theresa of Habsburg with the preliminary agreements of Vienna of 1735.
With the 1737 Convention, Anna Maria, sister of Gian Gastone, linked the Medici art collections to the city of Florence decreeing their inalienability.
Francesco Stefano's successor, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, opened the Gallery to the public in 1769 and entrusted Zanobi del Rosso with the preparation of the new entrance to the Museum Mediceum.
Between 1842 and 1856, Leopold II ordered the creation of 28 statues for the niches of the pillars on the square, depicting illustrious Tuscan characters from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.
From the Kingdom of Italy to today
With the Kingdom of Italy and the transfer of Renaissance statues to the new Bargello National Museum, the Gallery gradually assumed the function of an art gallery.
The new layout of the first rooms of the Gallery dates back to 1956, by the architects Giovanni Michelucci, Carlo Scarpa and Ignazio Gardella.
On 17 December 2011 the new west staircase was inaugurated, designed by Adolfo Natalini, which allows the connection of the historical floor of the Uffizi Gallery to the new rooms on the first floor.
