What Do You Know About The Uffizi Gallery?

Uffizi Gallery is an art gallery or museum which is situated in Florence. The gallery has the finest painting collections of the time of the Italian Renaissance. The most valuable collections were derived from the famous Medici family of Tuscany.

Cosimo I appointed Giorgio Vasari to design a palace in the year 1559. The palace was supposed to be used as a government office, which was called Uffizi in the local language. The palace was named later Uffizi Palace. Giorgio connected the Uffizi Palace with the Pitti Palace through the corridor which was built over the Ponte Vecchio.

Maria Ludovica, the last member of the Medici family donated her family collections to Tuscany in the year 1737. The collections of the Medici family were collected in Uffizi House. It was opened to the public in the year of 1769. In this way the Uffizi House became the Uffizi Museum.

The building of the museum was damaged by a bomb during the Second World War and also by a flood. The entire museum building was restored and enlarged in the year 1966. The Uffizi Museum has a collection of antique sculpture, a gallery of self-portraits and over 100,000 paintings and drawings. Nowadays the Uffizi Gallery is also a venue for works of other Italian and non-Italian schools. It is one of the best art galleries in the world.