"The blow of the pandemic was very strong, but the Uffizi Galleries resist: in 2020 we had a total of 1,206,175 visitors, 27.5% of the previous year, despite Covid and all that it entailed in terms of closures and restrictions. This places us in seventh place among art museums around the world, in 2019 we were in ninth place in the ranking ".
This was stated by the director of the Uffizi Eike Schmidt, interviewed by the Foreign Press Association in Italy.
"We have lost 72% of visitors - he added -, the same percentage as the Louvre in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid".
"Overall - continued Schmidt - we achieved revenues of 8.8 million euros, which exactly reflect the percentage of decrease in visitors. In 2019, collections were 34 million".
Regarding the restart of the museums, Schmidt explains that "for museums we do not expect the real restart before next year. From 2022 we expect a return to the great demand that existed before the pandemic.
Operationally, as the Uffizi at the beginning of May we will be ready to reopen: we have 15 new rooms dedicated to the painting of the Florentine and Roman sixteenth century that will be inaugurated on the same day in which the museum will return to welcome the public