Florence’s secret Vasari Corridor opens to the public after €11 million restoration
The Uffizi’s hidden Medici passageway has opened to the general public for the primary time following an eight-year restoration.
Florence’s Vasari Hall, a 750-meter-long elevated passageway that connects the Uffizi Galleries to the Pitti Palace, formally reopened on Saturday (21 December) after a monumental eight-year restoration venture costing €11 million.
For the primary time ever, the general public is now in a position to stroll by the secretive hall that when served as a personal route for Florence’s ruling Medici household and Europe’s elite.
Commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1565, the Vasari Hall was designed to serve a number of functions. Not solely did it enable the Medici to journey in privateness between their authorities workplaces on the Uffizi and their residence on the Pitti Palace, but it surely additionally shielded them from the crowds beneath and any potential threats.
The hall’s design is as a lot about secrecy as it’s about grandeur: with 73 small home windows lining the route, it offered breathtaking views of Florence and allowed the Medici to maintain a watchful eye on town with out stepping out into the general public sphere.
Over the centuries, the hall turned an area reserved just for the privileged. All through historical past, it has been walked by artists, politicians, and even dictators. In 1938, Italian fascist chief Benito Mussolini took Adolf Hitler on a personal tour of the hall.
For many of the twentieth century, the passageway remained closed to the general public, and was solely opened for choose research teams or personal excursions, earlier than closing fully in 2016 attributable to security considerations.
Now, due to a mixture of state funding and personal donations – together with $1 million (€960,000) from US businessman Skip Avansino – the Vasari Hall has been restored to its former glory and is open to all guests. Entry is offered for an extra €18 on prime of the €25 entry payment to the Uffizi Galleries, giving guests an opportunity to stroll within the footsteps of historical past whereas having fun with the hall’s gorgeous architectural options.
“It was a hall of steady passage between the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi for primarily 5 centuries. However the thought is not only to open the hall, which in itself has an significance, but additionally to indicate to the general public the connection between the varied souls of this monumental complicated and its collections,” Simone Verde, the director of the Uffizi Galleries, advised The Guardian.
The brand new association contains strict crowd management measures, with solely 25 guests allowed within the hall each quarter-hour. Because of its elevated place above the Arno River, the hall can not meet hearth security rules requiring exits each 30 metres. To deal with this, 5 new exits have been added.
As guests observe the route, they may cross the well-known Ponte Vecchio and go by the previous personal balcony utilized by the Medici household to attend mass on the Church of Santa Felicita beneath – with out ever mingling with the congregation.
The Vasari Hall has survived wars, bombings, and terrorist assaults over the centuries. In 1944, when German forces destroyed a number of of Florence’s bridges, the Ponte Vecchio was the one one spared.
Extra just lately, in 1993, the hall was broken in a bombing orchestrated by the Sicilian mafia, an assault that killed 5 individuals and injured many extra.
But, regardless of these trials, the hall has stood as a testomony to Florence’s resilience and its ongoing position in European historical past.
Further sources • Uffizi Galleries, Guardian
