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Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e il Paesaggio e per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Demoetnoantropologico di Firenze, Pistoia e Prato: Galleria degli Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery, founded in Florence in 1581, by the De Medici family, is one of the oldest museums in the world. Many important works of Italian and other schools, dating from between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, are kept here, including the largest existing collection of Tuscan Renaissance paintings. The Web guide contains pictures, comments, biographies and a glossary of artistic movements and techniques.

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.

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 been 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.

Contact:  Giovanna Damiani
Web site: http://www.sbas.firenze.it/