The Uffizi

We made it inside our first Galleries! The Ufizzi hosts more than a million people per year, with line-ups in high season sometimes being 5 hours long. It's smaller sister, the Academmia delle'Arte is the 2nd most visited, with slightly smaller visit numbers. Being in the off-season, crowds are smaller, but wanting to diminish the number even further, Marc discovers in the fine print that Saturday nights, these 2 Galleries stay open till 11 pm!

Needing at least 3 hours for the Ufizzi first, we venture the long way around, doing our first crossing of the Ponte Vecchio, Florence's most famous bridge from the 1300s, home of the gold and silversmiths, and the only bridge left standing after the German's destructive retreat during World War II.

Painting by Antonietta Brandeis, Italian landscape painter, 1849-1920:

Entering Piazza Vecchio, we see our first many-story high sculptures, outdoors in the Piazza and those sheltered for 500 years in the Loggia, with an almost-full moon rising. Breathtaking. We stop to gather our wits at a patio with red wine and a platter of cheeses with honey.

Once inside, we are astonished to find only  100 others spending their Saturday night just like us, instead of 1000s jostling through. Often we are the only ones in the room. And rare indeed to get a photo of the main hallway empty. A beautiful night!

The entryway:

The main hallway, the Ufizzi - empty of people! It was originally Florence's Magistrates offices, commissioned by Cosimo Medici. With the die-out of this arts patronage dynasty, the last heir bequeathed all of  her holdings to the City of Florence.

Portrait of Michelangelo, taken from that ceiling: 

Some of the more notable artworks:

Adoration of the Magi, 1475, Roselli

Madonna and Child with Two Angels

Filippo Lippi, 1465 

The Tribune: in Renaissance architectural design, every palace had its grand showroom:

Seashell ceiling, spectacular! 

Spring,  Alessandro Boticelli, 1478

We have a small print of this, given to us by Don Wolvin, and it's hung in every bathroom we ever owned...and we never knew what it was! 

Our 1st Michelangelo! Doni  Tondo, 1507, his only painting done on wood. From what we've seen so far of other artists who were his colleagues, we now understand he was far and away a game-changing painter.

Venus of Urbino, Titian, 1538.

Brought to the Ufizzi in the 1700s, it was covered with a 'modesty  panel' for close to a century, particularly during the Queen Mother's tour.

Caravaggio, 1613, the Wedding Feast

The Ufizzi from the courtyard, at night. The Gallery follows the hallway in the square U with ante-rooms off of both exterior sides.