Uffizi Gallery Guide: Tickets, Must-See Works and a 2-Hour Route

The most famous art museum in Italy was never meant to be a museum. "Uffizi" simply means "offices": in 1560 Cosimo I de' Medici ordered Giorgio Vasari to build a home for the thirteen magistracies that ran the Florentine state, right next to the government palace. The art moved in later, floor by floor, until the bureaucrats were outnumbered by Botticellis. And the whole collection still sits in Florence for one reason: in 1737 Anna Maria Luisa, the last of the Medici, signed a "Family Pact" leaving everything to the city on condition that nothing would ever leave it.

That history explains how the building works today. It is a long U of corridors with small rooms opening off them, which means bottlenecks, one-way flows and a lot of walking. This guide covers the 2026 ticket rules (several changed this year), the reopened Vasari Corridor and a 2-hour route that gets you through the essentials without burning out by room 15.

Uffizi tickets in 2026: what changed

Prices are set by the official Uffizi Galleries site, and there are a few things to know before you book:

• Standard ticket: €25 bought on the day at the ticket office, €29 bought online in advance. The extra €4 is the reservation fee, and in high season it is worth every cent.
• No more cheap winter ticket. The old low-season discount (November to February) is gone. Expect the same price all year.
• The early-bird ticket is gone too. Until 2025 you could pay less to enter by 8:55. From 1 January 2026 that discount was replaced by an afternoon ticket: €16 for entry from 4 p.m. (around €20 if booked online). If you can live with two and a half hours inside, it is the best deal in the building.
• Reduced ticket: €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25. Free for under-18s of any nationality, plus a few other categories listed on the official site.
• Tickets are nominative. Since October 2025 every ticket carries the visitor's name and you must show photo ID that matches it. Book with the name on your passport.

PassePartout and the free first Sunday

If you also plan to visit the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens, look at the PassePartout 5 days: €40 for all three, or €58 including the Vasari Corridor. Since the Uffizi alone costs €29 booked online, the pass pays for itself the moment you cross the Arno.

On the first Sunday of every month entry is free, like at all Italian state museums. The catch: no reservations are possible, so the queue along the Piazzale degli Uffizi can easily run two hours or more. Go only if you arrive well before opening and have patience to spare.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 8:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and closed on Mondays. Hours shift for holidays and special evening openings, so check the calendar on the official site before you go.

The Vasari Corridor reopened (and how to visit)

The Vasari Corridor is the elevated passage Cosimo I had built in 1565, in about five months, so he could walk from his offices to his new home at the Pitti Palace without ever touching the street. It runs for almost a kilometre: out of the Uffizi, along the river, across the top of the Ponte Vecchio and through the church of Santa Felicita, where a private balcony let the Medici hear Mass unseen. The famous story is that the butchers on the bridge were later evicted because the smell reached the duke, and replaced by goldsmiths, who are still there.

After eight years of works, the corridor reopened in December 2024. The self-portrait collection that used to line its walls was moved into the main gallery, and the restored corridor is now mostly about the walk itself and the windows over the Arno. Practical details:

• The only way in is the Uffizi + Vasari Corridor combo: €43 on the day, €47 booked online, or the €58 PassePartout.
• Visits run Tuesday to Sunday in small timed groups (about 25 people), in one direction only: from the Uffizi towards the Boboli Gardens.
• Slots sell out weeks ahead in spring and summer. Book this first and build the rest of your Florence plans around it.

A 2-hour route through the Uffizi

The gallery is laid out over two floors. You start at the top (second floor) and work down. Room numbers have been reshuffled more than once during recent renovations, so use the artists' names as your guide and grab the free map at the entrance.

Second floor: the Middle Ages to Botticelli (60 minutes)

1. The three Maestàs (room 2, 10 min). Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto painted the same subject, the Virgin enthroned, within a few decades of each other. Stand in the middle and watch painting go from flat gold icons to bodies with real weight. It is the whole Renaissance in one room.
2. Simone Martini's Annunciation (10 min). Look at the angel's words, literally embossed in gold, travelling towards a Virgin who recoils as if she would rather not hear them.
3. Piero della Francesca's Duke and Duchess of Urbino (5 min). The duke's famous profile is not an artistic choice: he lost his right eye in a tournament and only ever posed from the left.
4. The Botticelli rooms (20 min). The Birth of Venus and Primavera hang a few steps apart. This is the most crowded spot in the museum, so do not fight the front row: step back, wait for a gap, and spend time on Primavera, where botanists have identified nearly 200 different flowers.
5. Leonardo (10 min). The Annunciation, the unfinished Adoration of the Magi and the Baptism of Christ, painted with his master Verrocchio. Tradition says Leonardo painted the angel on the left so well that Verrocchio gave up painting.
6. The Tribuna (5 min). The octagonal treasure room Francesco I built in 1584, with a mother-of-pearl dome. You view it from the doorway only.

The corridors and the window (10 minutes)

Walk the short south corridor that links the two wings. The window here gives you the same view as this article's cover photo: the Arno, the Ponte Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor crossing it. Take your photo and rest: one floor to go.

First floor: the High Renaissance and Caravaggio (40 minutes)

1. Michelangelo's Doni Tondo (10 min). His only finished panel painting that survives, still in the round gilded frame he probably designed himself. The muscular Virgin already announces the Sistine Chapel.
2. Raphael and Titian (15 min). Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch, put back together after a house collapse in 1547, and Titian's Venus of Urbino, the painting that inspired Manet's Olympia three centuries later.
3. Caravaggio and Artemisia (15 min). The Medusa painted on a real ceremonial shield, the Bacchus with the rotting fruit, and Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes, perhaps the most violent painting in Florence. End here: it is impossible to look at anything after it.

Tips that save time

• Book the first slot (8:15) or the 4 p.m. ticket. Mid-morning is when the tour groups peak.
• Bring your ID and arrive 15 minutes before your slot: there is an airport-style security check.
• Large bags and umbrellas go to the cloakroom. Travel light.
• Eat after, not during. The museum café on the terrace above the Loggia dei Lanzi is pleasant but pricey; the streets around Santa Croce have far better value.
• Save energy for the city. Two hours in the Uffizi is plenty for a first visit. Better to leave hungry for more than to drag yourself through the last rooms.

Explore Florence with Trevurs

The Uffizi make much more sense once you know who paid for everything. Our free self-guided tour The Medici: Money, Art and Poison walks you through the bank, the palaces, the plots and the family that turned a merchant city into the capital of the Renaissance. Pair it with Michelangelo and the Renaissance in One Walk or Florence: Dante and the City He Sent to Hell for the rest of your stay. Download Trevurs, pick a tour and go at your own pace: the audio works offline, so you will not need data in the streets of Florence.