Save time and avoid the long lines during your visit to the Uffizi in this carefully curated tour that focuses on select masterpieces that best highlight the artistic evolution that lead up to the Renaissance. Analyze some of the greatest works and hear the fascinating stories behind their creation as your art historian guide ushers you through one of the world’s greatest art collections.
Private Tour with an Art Historical Guide through one of Italy's Greatest Museum
A private Uffizi Gallery exploration of the greatest artworks housed in a vast collection of Medieval and Renaissance masterpieces.
To better understand the evolution of art, our passionate Uffizi guide commences with works dating back to 13th century. An art history expert, they will reveal the Medieval perspective and the ideas that ushered in change, the Renaissance beginnings.
Guests will be lead through the maze of corridors and small rooms to masterpieces by Giotto, Cimabue, and Duccio di Buoninsegna. Seeing the Birth of Venus and Primavera is a must, just two of the 20-or-so Botticelli’s the gallery owns. The guide will explain the story behind the only painting Michelangelo actually completed and the early works of Leonardo da Vinci that so dazzled his master, he never painted again. There is also information on ancient scientific discoveries behind the creation of these masterworks.
A short stop on the picturesque terrace precedes viewing Bronzino’s court paintings of the Medici family. Guests will also find out about the Popes that Raphael depicted in introspective contemplation and the Uffizi’s Venetian holdings, including Titian’s Venus that created such a stir in the 16th century.
This Uffizi Gallery stroll concludes with an understanding of a new time, new genres and a new way of painting, with masterpieces by the evocative Caravaggio and his followers.
Built by Giorgio Vasari from 1560, the Uffizi building followed Renaissance principals of many smaller rooms connected by spacious corridors, a design rendering the museum a literal maze of treasures. Vasari was particularly influenced by Brunelleschi and Michelangelo in his use of gray pietra serena, one-tone plaster walls and classical columns that are perfect for exalting the masterpieces within.
The building was initially created as a multi-purpose space for Cosimo I de’ Medici’s governmental offices (hence, “uffizi”). Facing over the Arno River, it originally housed the state archive, tapestry workshops, a rather large theater and an exquisitely decorated open-air loggia on the top floor that displayed the family’s great collection of Roman and Greek antiquities.
The majority of paintings to be admired today were then housed elsewhere, in sacred religious spaces or in private homes. Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici, bequeathed the family’s vast collection of artworks to the city of Florence, leading to the Uffizi Gallery becoming what it is today.
Considered the most important collection in the world for Renaissance Art, the Uffizi Gallery is a big, busy and somewhat daunting museum. A visit with a knowledgeable, personable private guide certainly ensures guests get more out a visit.