We spent the afternoon wandering through the art gallery. You could have spent the whole day in there - there was ~46 rooms. Camera's were not allowed so we were not able to get any pictures of this. When we came out of the museum, we saw mime's dressed like statues. They moved when people came up to them and offered some money.
The construction of the Uffizi palace began in 1560, when the Duke Cosimo I
dei Medici decided to build a special seat for the offices (hence the name
"uffizi") of the thirteen magistracies, that is for the administrative
center of the Florentine State. Cosimo I commissioned the project of the
building to Giorgio Vasari, painter and architect at the Medici court, who
realized one of the most famous architectural masterwork of Florentine
Mannerism. Stretching from the Signoria Palace to the river Arno the costruction
posed difficult technical problems since the foundations were quite over the
river; Vasari had to include into the building the ancient church of San
Pier Scheraggio and the ancient Zecca (near the Orcagna Loggias). When in
1574 Vasari and Cosimo I died, the Uffizi were not yet completed: Francesco I,
son of Cosimo I, succeeded his father, Bernardo Buontalenti succeeded Vasari in
supervision of construction; in 1581 the building was terminated. Some years
before at the first floor the offices of the thirteen magistracies had been
installed: everyone of these had a beautiful entrance door in the portico at the
ground floor. A man of peculiar intelligence, Francesco I (1541-1587) had a
profound interest for science, alchemy and art; in 1581 he decided to give a
nearly private arrangement to the second floor of the Uffizi. In the west wing
he set laboratories where specialized artisans worked jewels and precious
stones, perfumes were distilled, new medecines were experimented; in the east
wing he placed ancient sculptures of medicean collection: shortly afterwards in
this side of the building Buontalenti started to erect the Tribune.
Francesco's successors increased more and more the medicean collection with new
acquisitions of paintings, sculptures, precious and rare object in general; they
were set not only at the Uffizi but also at Pitti Palace or in other medicean
palaces. The continuing growth of the granducal collections in 17th century
enriched the Uffizi: new rooms of the second floor were arranged to display
masterworks as in a museum and in the meanwhile the Gallery could be visited on
request by Florentine or foreign persons. For this the Uffizi can be considered
the first kind of modern museum of the history. In 1737, with the death of Gian
Gastone (born in 1671) the Medici dynasty ended and the family of Lorraine
ascended the throne of Tuscany. The last descendant of Medici family, the
Palatine Electrix Anna Maria Luisa, sister of Gian Gastone, made an important
agreement that secured for ever the city of Florence all the medicean art
treasures. It was so eliminated any risk of dispersion of this artistic
patrimony unique in the world. The Lorraine family, from Pietro Leopoldo to
Leopoldo II, enriched the whole collection, increasing it with important
masterpieces: many paintings and several hundred of drawings were bought, many
Florentine pictures were transferred to the Uffizi from Tuscan monastries, after
suppression of religious orders during the 19th century. In 1860 at the
formation of the Kingdom of Italy the Medici-Lorraine collections became public
property to all effects and purposes. At the end of the 19th century a new
arrangement of the Gallery caused the destruction of the wonderful Medici
Theatre, to make way to the first rooms of the east corridor, before the Tribune.
In 1989 the State Archive that occupied the first
floor of the Uffizi, has been transferred in the new seat of Piazza Beccaria:
the first floor will be indeed arranged to double the Gallery's area, as planned
in the Nuovi Uffizi project. The first six rooms of this floor have beeen
recently restored; all the other rooms soon will be added to them, to make way
to the exhibition of many masterworks now conserved in the warehouses and
realize new arrangements for all needs of a museum of such importance.
