The Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi, closed since 2016 to allow the implementation of necessary interventions to adapt to the most recent safety regulations, reopens on 21 December. Made accessible to the general public for the first time, visitors from around the world will be able to enjoy a unique panoramic walk above the center of Florence on a daily basis; a route which, starting from a special entrance on the first floor of the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, will take them to walk over the Ponte Vecchio, in order to reach, beyond the Arno, the Boboli gardens and the palace of Palazzo Pitti. More than a journey, it will be a real leap back in time almost half a millennium, when the Corridor was created.
Restored today to its original nakedness, it appears to the visitor as a simple “aerial tunnel”, over seven hundred meters long above the heart of the city, exactly as it appeared at the time when the lords of Florence traveled through it to arrive in a very short time at the Palazzo Old, undisturbed and safe, from their home in Pitti.
The consolidation and recovery project for the reopening was created by the Uffizi and the Superintendency and presented in February 2019 after 18 months of studies, research and investigations involving dozens of specialists (over a thousand pages of the program, 201 square meters of documents carried out, 23 specialist reports drawn up, 2435 photographs, dozens of tests and essays on the materials completed). The works, worth around 10 million euros – to which must be added a million dollars donated in 2023 by the American entrepreneur Skip Avansino – started in 2022, finishing in recent weeks.
Vasari’s last restoration dates back to the 1990s. The new route of the Corridor guarantees complete accessibility for disabled people, with an integrated system of ramps, platforms and lifts that allow the easy overcoming of any difference in height along the itinerary; it is equipped with toilets; It has low energy consumption LED lighting and is entirely under video surveillance.
Among the main interventions envisaged by the project, the creation of new emergency exits. Among these – five in total – one was created inside the space of a pylon after Ponte Vecchio, in Oltrarno, in correspondence with via de’ Bardi, and another at the Cortile delle Cacce, in the Boboli Gardens. The program of interventions also included structural consolidation operations (as part of the anti-seismic prevention plan) and the restoration of the interiors: in particular, plasterwork, reeds and the terracotta flooring.
For the director Simone Verde “keeping a commitment made with the citizens the day after the settlement, the Vasari Corridor will reopen to the public by the end of 2024. For the Uffizi Complex this is a moment of strategic importance which allows us to mend, also in its usability, the unity of its monumental and collecting history. From 21 December, in fact, visitors who wish to do so will be able to pass from one side of the Arno to the other. appreciating in all its sprawling extension the vastness, coherence and richness of the Medici citadel of power and the arts. This opening, in fact, goes hand in hand with the systematic work of redevelopment and recomposition of the museum in progress and which is being concentrated. at the same level of care both on the Vasari complex of the Uffizi and on Boboli and Palazzo Pitti”.