🏨 The Medici and external Vasari Corridor Experience Activity

Overview

The Vasari Corridor walk and guided tour of Palazzo Vecchio on the footsteps of the Medici family. Please note, this tour will start with a minimum of 2 pax and a maximum of 8 participants.

On this tour we will learn about the legacy and the story of the Medici family during their almost 200 years of the Grand Duchy.

We will meet in front of their regal mansion, Pitti Palace, and we will follow the magnificence of this powerful family to which Florence owes much of its fame.

We will follow, from the outside, the Vasari Corridor inaugurated during the wedding between Francis the first and the princess Joan of Austria. We will then enjoy the stunning view from the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, cross the Uffizi gallery square, and talk about the oldest museum in the world.

Finally, we will arrive at Palazzo Vecchio, which we will visit from the inside and admire its halls and monumental apartments.

What's Included

All Fees and Taxes

What's Not Included

Private transportation

Snacks

Traveler Information

INFANT: Age: 0 - 5
YOUTH: Age: 6 - 17
ADULT: Age: 18 - 120

Additional Info

Public transportation options are available nearby
Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Wheelchair accessible

Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
Service animals allowed
Transportation options are wheelchair accessible

Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.

Experience may be cancelled due to Insufficient travelers

Palazzo Pitti

Palazzo Pitti was the residence of the Medici family, then of the Habsburg-Lorraine family and finally of the Savoy family. It can be considered an actual royal palace. It is located on the slopes of the Boboli hill, and it still retains the name of the man who had it built in the mid-fifteenth century, Luca Pitti. It was Eleanor of Toledo, wife of the first Grand Duke, Cosimo I of the Medicis, who transformed it into a sumptuous residence with an adjoining garden; both were expanded over the centuries to make it what we see today.

Palazzo Pitti is now home to 4 different museums which are the Palatine Gallery and Imperial and Royal Apartments, the Gallery of Modern Art, the Museum of Costume and Fashion and the Treasury of the Grand Dukes.

The Palatine Gallery, together with the Imperial and Royal Apartments, occupies the first floor of the Pitti Palace. It holds the rich picture gallery of the Medici family, and it was inaugurated by the Lorraine family between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century with around 500 works selected from the Medici collection. It is an extraordinary assortment of pieces and it certainly displays some of the most important works by Raphael, but also masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rubens. Absolutely worth seeing are Woman with a Veil by Raphael, Saint Mary Magdalene by Artemisia Gentileschi and Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Cristofano Allori.

The Gallery of Modern Art includes works of modern art, paintings and sculptures from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 1930s that come from the Grand Ducal collections and private donations such as that by Diego Martelli. The Macchiaioli section is one of the most popular, with paintings by Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini, as well as works by Hayez and Canova.

The Treasury of the Grand Dukes was once known as the Silverworks museum, and retains a very rich collection of vases and furnishings in precious stones and metals. The museum is located on the ground and mezzanine floors of the palace, in what were once the summer apartments of the Medici family. The rooms are entirely decorated with various frescoed scenes designed to celebrate the marriage between Ferdinando II of the Medici house and Vittoria della Rovere in 1637. Do not miss the amazing collection of jewels created between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries and the section dedicated to contemporary jewelry .

The Museum of Costume and Fashion, formerly known as the Costume Gallery, is located in the Palazzina della Meridiana and is the first Italian state museum dedicated to fashion. The collection displays fashion clothes and accessories from the 18th century to the present day, including undergarments. Extremely interesting are the funeral clothes of Cosimo I of the Medicis, Eleanor of Toledo and their son Garzia dating back to the sixteenth century.

20 minutes • Admission Ticket Not Included

Ponte Vecchio

The Ponte Vecchio is one of the most famous monuments in Florence and is certainly one of its major attractions. Vecchio means “old” in Italian and the name comes from the fact that the bridge is built in the narrowest point of the Arno river, where there has always been a bridge since the Etruscan times. The current bridge was built in 1345, after the previous one was swept away by the terrible flood of 1333. This is also the only bridge that survived the Second World War. On the night between the 3rd and 4th August 1944 the Nazis blew up all the bridges in the city, saving only the Ponte Vecchio.

On the Ponte Vecchio today we can admire the famous and dazzling shop windows of Florentine jewelers and goldsmiths, whose shops have been there since 1593 when Ferdinand I ordered the goldsmiths to replace the beccai (the ancient butchers) established on the bridge since 1442. A legend narrates that Cosimo I while walking over the bridge exclaimed: pecunia non olet "money does not smell" thus suggesting the use of metallic materials for the products sold on the bridge.

Halfway across the bridge there is the bronze bust of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine goldsmith and sculptor of the sixteenth century, inventor of the famous technique of chiseled gold, also known as "Florentine gold".

Above the shops of Ponte Vecchio there is the Vasari Corridor, a famous passage built by Giorgio Vasari in 1565 at the behest of Cosimo I. The corridor was built to allow the future Grand Duke to move undisturbed and safely between the center of the political and administrative power, in Palazzo Vecchio, and his private residence in the Oltrarno area, the Pitti Palace.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Gallerie Degli Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery is the oldest museum in the world, and it is located in the historic center of Florence, next to Palazzo Vecchio and Ponte Vecchio.

The name comes from its previous intended use. The building, commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo I, was conceived as the seat of the administrative and judicial offices of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Giorgio Vasari started this construction in 1560. The building was subsequently connected to the government headquarters in Palazzo Vecchio by an elevated passageway which, in 1565, was extended to the Grand Duke’s residence in Palazzo Pitti, thus creating the famous Vasari Corridor.

Grand Duke Francesco I was responsible for the first museographic layout, and he opened the gallery in 1581 for the first time for on-request visits. He had the Medici treasures placed on the second floor and the ceilings frescoed with Grotesque motifs according to the taste of the time. In 1769 Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine opened the Uffizi Gallery through a new staircase, allowing the public to fully enjoy the great works of beauty collected over the centuries by the Medici family.

The Uffizi collection is one of the largest and most important in the world and has some universal masterpieces such as The Birth of Venus and Springtime by Sandro Botticelli, the Tondo Doni by Michelangelo, The Madonna and Child and Two Angels by Filippo Lippi, the Portraits of the Dukes of Urbino by Piero della Francesca; and masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, in addition to the sublime Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. Alongside the pictorial works, there is an incredible collection of sculptures, among which we should mention the only Greek sculpture visible in the gallery, the famous Medici Venus purchased by Ferdinando I de' Medici in 1575, as well as the collection of prints and drawings, in the Section bearing the same name.

In recent years, the Uffizi Gallery has seen the refitting and reopening of new thematic rooms and the annexation of some collections such as that of the Contini Bonacossi, but it has never lost its chronological development that makes the Gallery unique in the world.

20 minutes • Admission Ticket Not Included

Palazzo Vecchio

Palazzo Vecchio is one of the most important monuments of the city of Florence and has been the seat of its government for more than seven hundred years.

The name Palazzo Vecchio (literally: old palace) was given to this building after 1565, when the court of Grand Duke Cosimo I moved to the "new" Palazzo Pitti. The palace changed its name through the centuries following its politics: it was originally called Palazzo dei Priori, then Palazzo della Signoria and finally Palazzo Ducale. It was also the seat of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy when Florence was the capital between 1865 and 1871, and today it is the seat of the Municipality of Florence.

The construction of Palazzo Vecchio was entrusted to Arnolfo di Cambio in 1299, who built it on the ruins of pre-existing buildings by incorporating the ancient Torre della Vacca, the base of the current Torre di Arnolfo. The building we see today is the result of successive constructions and expansions that took place over the following centuries, such as the construction of the Salone dei Cinquecento (=Room of 500) at the end of the 15th century commissioned by Girolamo Savonarola.

Palazzo Vecchio houses the Museum of Palazzo Vecchio which has various rooms of impressive beauty that display the history of Florence and of the Medici family who ruled the city for almost 300 years. One of the most spectacular halls is the monumental Salone dei Cinquecento: it has a length of 117 feet, a width of 75.4 feet and a height of 59 feet. The works that decorate the walls of the room are the work of Giorgio Vasari and his workshop. He received the commission from Cosimo I de’ Medici to transform the hall into a meeting room which would glorify his feats and history. At the center of the ceiling we find the Apotheosis of Cosimo I surrounded by more than 40 allegories regarding the districts of Florence and the domains of the Duchy.
In addition to Vasari's works, the Salone dei Cinquecento boasts Michelangelo's famous Vittoria, one of the eight sculptures that, together with the Captives, was made for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

Of particular beauty is the Studiolo of Francesco I, also created by Vasari and workshop, with walls covered with paintings, stuccos and sculptures that represent the four elements of nature (air, earth, water and fire). You can also admire the portraits of Cosimo I and his wife Eleanor of Toledo painted by Alessandro Allori.

On a sunny day, you should climb the Tower of Palazzo Vecchio which, with its 311.5 feet, rises over the roofs of the city. After climbing the 223 steps you reach the last crenellated sighting level which offers a splendid panorama of Florence.

60 minutes • Admission Ticket Included

The Medici and external Vasari Corridor Experience Activity - Florence Travel Guide

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