Over history, dukes, dictators and Europe’s illustrious elite have walked through the Vasari corridor, a narrow, 750-metre-long elevated passageway crossing the Arno River in Florence.
Now visitors to the Tuscan capital can follow in their footsteps when the newly restored landmark, which connects the Uffizi Galleries with the Pitti Palace and the Boboli gardens, opens on Saturday to the general public for the first time.
The corridor, designed by the Renaissance-era architect Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned in 1565 by Cosimo I de’ Medici, the second duke of Florence, and completed in just five months.
It was built to celebrate the marriage of Cosimo’s son Francesco I to Giovanna d’Austria, but also to ease the commute between his home in the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi, which at the time was the city’s seat of government, while shielding him from the crowds on the Ponte Vecchio as well as potential assassins.
Cosimo’s well-heeled guests could marvel at the wonders of Florence through the 73 small windows lining the route, which also provided the duke with a way to keep a secret watch over the city.
For centuries, the landmark was privy only to those with power. In 1938 the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini showed his guest Adolf Hitler around.
In recent decades it was only open to study groups and, for a few years until its closure for internal restoration works in 2016, rare private tours.
But the pathway can now be accessed by anyone paying an extra €18 on top of the €25 fee to enter the sprawling museums that make up the Uffizi Galleries.
Along the way, visitors will cross over the colourful Ponte Vecchio and walk by what was a sort-of balcony that allowed the Medicis, a political and banking dynasty, to follow mass in Santa Felicita church below without having to mingle with the congregation.
Visitors will also stroll through a courtyard containing a grotto built by another Renaissance architect, Bernardo Buontalenti, before entering the Pitti Palace, which today houses fives museums and the largest collection of paintings by Raphael in the world. They will exit through the Boboli gardens.
Simone Verde, the director of the Uffizi Galleries, said: “It was a corridor of continuous passage between the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi for essentially five centuries. But the idea is not just to open the corridor, which in itself has an importance, but also to show to the public the connection between the various souls of this monumental complex and its collections.”
Before the renovations, which were designed to make the structure safer, including the installation of emergency exits and CCTV, more than 1,000 paintings dating from the 16th century had hung on the walls of the corridor.
For now, the walkway will remain bare, although there are plans for it to be used to exhibit art and relics. But who needs paintings when you can absorb real-life landscapes through its windows?
“The panoramic aspect has certainly always made the passageway interesting,” said Simona Pasquinucci, an art historian and curator at the Uffizi Galleries. “It was interesting for Cosimo to more or less check what was happening in his city from these windows. Back then, the river was much livelier, with all the fisheries, mills and other activities on and around the bridge.”
Pasquinucci said there was evidence to suggest that Medici children played in the passageway.
The Vasari corridor is believed to have been inspired by the Passetto di Borgo, an elevated passage linking Vatican City with Rome’s Castel Saint’Angelo through which Pope Clement VII, a member of the Medici family, escaped during the sack of Rome in 1527.
In turn, it inspired similar structures across Europe, including one linking the old Louvre Palace with the Tuileries Palace in Paris, according to Verde.
The corridor survived several wars. In August 1944, when retreating German troops blew up the bridges of Florence, the Ponte Vecchio, with its passageway, was the only one spared.
In 26 May 1993, parts of the corridor were significantly damaged after a car parked beneath it exploded, killing five people, in an attack organised by Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia.
“The intention of the attack wasn’t to destroy the corridor but to demonstrate to the state that the mafia was stronger,” Pasquinucci said.
