The Uffizi Galleries since 2014 bring together three extraordinary museum complexes that together collect the core of the collections of art and precious crafts, books and botany of the Medici, Habsburg, Lorraine and Savoy families: an authentic collection of treasures from Antiquity to the twentieth century which made the name of the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens great over time; three museum sites gathered and linked together, since the Renaissance, through the brilliant construction of the Vasari Corridor, and which together constitute one of the most important and visited cultural centers in the world.
Historically, the integration of these three entities, which since the sixteenth century have united the two banks of the river Arno in every sense, corresponds to a precise vision of life and culture, of power and habits, of the ruling families who have marked these places history and fate. “Di qua d’Arno” was built, in the mid-sixteenth century and by the will of Cosimo I de ‘Medici, the place to gather and concentrate the exercise of public power, the headquarters of the administration, the “uffizi” representing the Magistratures, of the Arts and Corporations, of the Courts of Florence.
The great architect Giorgio Vasari took care of the design by creating a wonderful building “on the river and almost in the air”, which in a couple of centuries was destined to also host the art collections of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and which in 1769 it was opened to the public as a museum in a modern sense by the will of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo.