Uffizi Gallery

The Uffizi Gallery is adjacent to the Palazzo Vecchio. In fact it was constructed in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici to serve as the offices (uffizi is Italian for offices) for Florentine magistrates.

This is a view of of the Palazzo Vecchio from the Uffizi.

As a museum it was even more overwhelming than the Vatican Museum. It has 45 rooms full of world famous masterpieces by artists like Botticelli, Giotto, el Greco, da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Rembrandt, Reubens, and Velazquez, just to name a few.

Photos were not allowed in the museum, but here are three of the masterpieces we saw there (copied from Wikipedia):

Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was a departure from the Roman Catholic religious themes that dominated art at the time.

Raphael's "Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi" appear to be discussing important affairs of state.

Piero della Francesca's "Battista Sforza" and "Federico da Montefeltro" could have been a typical Italian couple.

At the top of the museum we found a cafe' where we stopped to rest and have a sandwich. The patio off this cafe provided this view of Santa Maria dell'Fiore's dome and Giotto's bell tower.

Florence reservations!

This is a picture of people waiting in line to get into the Uffizi Gallery!

I am ecstatic this morning, because we now have reservations for the Accademia and Uffizi galleries in Florence. These are two very popular places and everyone recommends getting advance reservations. The lines are reported to be very very long. So now we have confirmation numbers and a designated time for each of them. All we have to do is find them and have 28 Euros cash in hand to pay. (The tickets were 10 Euros each plus 4 Euros handling.) You may be interested in how to make international calls. Here's how it works:

011 gets you outside of the United States

39 is the country code for Italy

055 is the city code for Florence

294 883 is the local number for Florence Museums reservations

Because we don't have long distance service on our home phone I used a calling card I bought at Sam's Club, which had to be accessed before calling 011 39 etc. The good news is it worked! Yay!