The Vasari Corridor reopening

On 21 December 2024 the Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi reopens. It has been closed since 2016 to allow for the necessary adaptation to the latest safety regulations.

Visitors from all over the world will be able to enjoy a unique panoramic walk over the centre of Florence: starting from a special entrance on the first floor from the Uffizi, they will walk over the Ponte Vecchio, so as to reach, across the Arno, the Boboli Gardens and Pitti Palace.

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 bareness, it shows itself to the visitor as a simple ‘air tunnel’, more than seven hundred metres long over the heart of the city, exactly as it appeared at the time when the lords of Florence used to walk through it to reach Palazzo Vecchio, undisturbed and safe, from their residence in Pitti Palace, in a very short time.

The construction site for the reopening of the Vasari Corridor was carried out by the Uffizi and the Soprintendenza and presented in February 2019 after 18 months of studies, research and investigations that involved dozens of specialists (over a thousand pages of the programme, 201 square metres of drawings carried out, 23 specialist reports drawn up, 2435 photographs, dozens of tests and essays on materials carried out). The work, costing around €10 million - to which must be added a million dollars donated in 2023 by the US entrepreneur Skip Avansino - started in 2022, finishing in last weeks. The last restoration of the Vasariano dates back to the 1990s.

The new Corridor is completely accessible to all, with an integrated system of ramps, platforms and lifts; it is equipped with toilets; it has low-energy LED lighting and is entirely video monitored. Among the main interventions included in the project is the construction of new emergency exits. Among these - a total of five - one was made inside the compartment of a pylon after Ponte Vecchio, in Oltrarno, at Via de' Bardi, and another at Cortile delle Cacce, in the Boboli Gardens. Structural consolidation operations were made as part of the earthquake prevention plan, and the restoration of the interiors: in particular, plasterwork, tiling, and the terracotta floor.

HOW TO VISIT THE VASARI CORRIDOR
The Vasari Corridor can be accessed by purchasing the Uffizi Gallery ticket with an extra charge of €43. Reservation is required: and it will be possible to book the visit from Tuesday 10 December (at 9.00 am). With the combo ticket visitors can enter the Uffizi two hours before the scheduled Vasariano tour, to visit the museum.

The Vasariano will be open from Tuesday to Sunday, at the time booked, one group at a time, for a maximum of 25 people (plus two staff members), from room D19 on the first floor of the gallery. The first group of the day can visit the Corridor at 10.15 am, the last at 4.35 pm. The Corridor can only be visited from the Uffizi to Boboli Gardens: visitors will exit through the door next to the Grotta Buontalenti, to be accompanied to the exit from the courtyard of Pitti Palace. It will not be possible to book more than 5 tickets at a time, even for different dates. On the ticket there will be a link to the map with the route to reach the access gate to the Corridor.