The Vasari Corridor in Florence, one of the city's Renaissance symbols that connects Palazzo Vecchio with Palazzo Pitti, passing through the Uffizi and over the Ponte Vecchio, reopens to the public.
The elevated path was closed in 2016 for restoration and to allow compliance with safety regulations. The intervention cost approximately 10 million euros and after a long wait, the Vasari Corridor will reopen permanently to the public on December 21st.
What is the Vasari Corridor
The 750-meter-long, all-windowed corridor was designed by the architect Giorgio Vasari in 1565 and it is an elevated path that was meant to be used by the rulers, the Medici, to pass between Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti, therefore from one bank of the Arno to the other, via the Uffizi Gallery (the most important museum in the city) and the Ponte Vecchio.
This is a suggestive walk that requires a reservation and an additional ticket: you enter from the Uffizi, walk over Ponte Vecchio and exit from the Boboli Gardens. The current corridor is completely empty as it was in ancient times, therefore devoid of furnishings and museum objects.
How to visit the Vasari Corridor
As mentioned, the Vasari Corridor will reopen on December 21st, but Reservations will open on Tuesday, December 10. To visit it, it will be mandatory to purchase the ticket for the Uffizi with the supplement for the visit to the Vasari Corridor, at a total price of 43 euros. It will not be possible to access it without first visiting the museum.
Access will be limited: only those who enter will be able to enter 25 people every 20 minutes and the walk lasts about 45 minutes.
Giorgio Vasari, painter, writer and architect of the Medici family of Florence
It is worth remembering that Vasari, as a Mannerist architect, favored the same criteria of architectural elegance that could be applied to a building as to a work of painting or sculpture. Vasari designed and built for a cultured and patronizing elite, such as the Medici family. Florentine and Roman architecture of the sixteenth century is characterized by very specific criteria: a building was judged based on elegance, ingenuity and variety of forms. His best-known buildings are the Uffizi in Florence, begun in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici, and the church, monastery and palace created for the Knights of San Stefano in Pisa and precisely the long corridor.
