About This Location
The Uffizi is one of Florence’s biggest names, but the building itself is part of the story. It was designed by Giorgio Vasari and built in the second half of the 1500s for Cosimo I de’ Medici, originally to bring the city’s administrative offices - the “uffizi” - under one roof. Standing here along the Uffizi’s long arcade, the setting feels like an open-air corridor: repeating arches, strong perspective lines, and a steady stream of people moving between Piazza della Signoria and the river end of the complex. In the wall niches, two statues help explain what this place became in the 1800s - a public “hall of fame” for Tuscany’s great minds. Niccolò Machiavelli is here in a marble statue by Lorenzo Bartolini from 1843. A short walk away in the same series is Galileo Galilei, sculpted by Aristodemo Costoli in 1851. This spot is also a good reminder that Florence’s power was built on both politics and ideas: a government building that later turned into a world-famous art museum, surrounded by writers, thinkers, and scientists carved into stone.