Several years ago, by chance, I saw a TV documentary about the Vasari Corridor in Florence. I’d never heard of it before, though I’d been to Florence. In fact, I’d walked right under it, in the portico between the road and the River Arno. But I suppose that was the whole idea – the corridor was built to be an escape passage for the Medici when they were the Grand Dukes of Florence, and a little nervous of a civil uprising. Although, given that they evicted people from their homes and moved shopkeepers’ businesses from the Ponte Vecchio, it was hardly very hidden. These days it is probably more of a secret because access remains just as restricted now as then.

In 1563, Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, was feeling a little insecure. His family had been battling with other local families and guilds for control of the city for about a century and had finally succeeded in turning the once proud republic into a hereditary monarchy, thanks to intervention from Pope Clement VII (himself a Medici). From 1532 onwards, the Medici would be kings, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The Making of the Vasari Corridor: A Royal Strategy

When his son Francesco was due to marry Johanna of Austria, Cosimo decided it was time to take care of his own security. He commissioned Giorgio Vasari (famous as painter, architect and writer of Lives of the Artists), to build a corridor connecting the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of government, with the Palazzo Pitti, the royal home. Unlike most building projects at the time, this one had a limited time for completion. By using a simple brick design, rather than the habitual Renaissance carved stonework, Vasari managed to build the passageway in just five months. This despite the fact he had to displace whole families and remove the butchers from their shops on the Palazzo Vecchio because Cosimo did not appreciate the smell. Since then all the shops along the bridge have been occupied by local gold and silversmiths and the law putting this in place still exists today, which is why, much as they’d love to, Prada, Gucci and the like cannot get into this prime retail space.

The Uffizi itself took so long to build (1560-81) that the originators of the project never saw its completion. Guess who they were? Yes, Cosimo I commissioning Giorgio Vasari. Both died in 1574. And it was not built as an art gallery but as a place for the guilds of the city’s artisans to meet and work, all under the watchful eye – and control – of the Medici.

But enough history, today I saw the Vasari Corridor in the twenty-first century and it’s still something special. For starters, access is extremely limited. Visitors are only allowed in on guided tours of limited numbers, and only along the section from the Uffizi Gallery to the Boboli Gardens. A guardian stands by the unmarked doors in  the Uffizi with a special key, and a guardian follows you through the passageway, checking you don’t photograph the paintings along the way or linger too long to enjoy the exclusive view along the river.

Façade of the Uffizi Gallery along the River Arno

The Uffizi Gallery: Special Access to the Masters

Our tour started in the Uffizi itself with a quick tour of some of the key works of the Renaissance. A bonus of being on a tour was gaining entry to the Uffizi through a back door and not having to battle the queues snaking through the courtyard and down the street. My advice: always book a Uffizi ticket ahead of time. It’s crowded enough once you get inside, you don’t want to already be fatigued from hanging around waiting outside. A guided visit with special access to the Vasari Corridor can also be pre-booked, for a much smoother, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Be warned, Florentine galleries involve a lot of stone stairs. And a lot of people. From the beginning, we were jostling with other tour groups in front of the most significant paintings but our patient and polite guide took us through, still managing to take time to really explain how art changed in the significant years of the Renaissance. Beginning with the flatness of the Madonna and Child as rendered by Giotto around 1306, through to the more rounded figures and perspective of Gentile de Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi of 1423, via the naughty monk Fra Lippi who had a child with a nun (she was the model for so many of his Madonnas), past the delicate beauty (and incredibly crowded room) of Botticelli, and on to the genius of Michelangelo and his only finished panel painting, the Doni Tondo of 1507. Here our tour of the main gallery ended – with so much art left unseen. (I realized I definitely had to come back and when I got home I went online and booked an advance ticket for the next day.)

More Storied History…

Painting Gallery, Uffizi

And so, our Vasari Corridor guards and guides awaited us. As we milled around waiting for those who had taken the opportunity to run to the toilets (very long queues – which is a bit of a theme for any Uffizi visit), we looked at the great view from up there. The Medici certainly had a way of putting themselves on top of Florence looking down on the city they basically owned. Originally this top floor was open to the sky and displayed Cosimo’s sculpture collection.

Then we entered the Vasari Corridor, more stairs, and the first thing I saw was a majorly damaged painting. I could hardly see what the image was meant to be. And there was another in similar condition at the bottom of the stairs. I had waited years for this moment and was looking at ruined art. The guide explained that they were examples of the damage caused by a Mafia bomb set off one night underneath the Uffizi in 1993. Five people died. If it had been during the day, the toll would have been so much higher. It was horrifying to think about.

In sober frames of mind, we headed down the corridor, following in the footsteps of the Medici family from 500 years earlier when they came and went from home to work avoiding the people they governed. The route of the corridor goes from the gallery, turning right above a specially-built colonnade next to the Arno, turning left to run across the top of the shops on one side of the Ponte Vecchio, around a tower (there was one family who stood up to the Medici and refused to give way for the corridor), across more shops, then the front of the church of Santa Felicita, then over shops and houses and on into the Palazzo Pitti. Our tour ended at the Boboli Gardens where a few steps lead us back outside.

Beautiful Views Inside and Out

The corridor is lined by closely hung paintings – this is the gallery’s famous collection of artists’ self-portraits. There is Rembrandt, Rubens, Filippino Lippi, right through to the twentieth century and a wonderful blue swirling self-portrait of Marc Chagall. Of over a hundred portraits of famous artists that we passed, I estimate only fifteen were of women.

Between the paintings are small windows, rectangular on one side, circular on the other. And the views are great – views you rarely have of Florence and so wonderfully framed by these almost portholes. Mind you, some of them were enlarged by Mussolini in 1939; it wasn’t only the Medici who had visions of grandeur.

Porthole window view of Florence at Uffizi Gallery

The most revealing window of them all is towards the end of the corridor and does not look out onto a view but into a building, the church of Santa Felicita. Cosimo decided that seeing as he was passing through a church along the way, he might as well participate in the service, but still only if he could stay aloof from those he ruled over. Hence this window looks down into the church and towards the altar with a small balcony and very thick protective railing. If you look up at the church from the road outside, the front is crossed, and largely obscured, by the Vasari Corridor.

In fact, once you are aware of the Vasari Corridor, you can clearly see it’s uniform façade running alongside the river, over the bridge and atop the buildings towards the Pitti Palace. Not so secret then. But clearly effective – Cosimo I managed to rule Florence for 37 years without getting knifed in the streets even as he accumulated wealth untold.

In fact, the family stayed in control of Florence until the mid-eighteenth century when the Medici family literally died out. Luckily for us, the final Medici, Anna Maria Luisa de Medici, bequeathed all the family’s possessions to the Tuscan State on the proviso none of it ever left Florence. It’s thanks to her that Florence is what it is today and that we get to see all these incredible buildings and artworks. She is definitely my favourite Medici.