Fallen from its rank of favourite, the Colosseum now gives way to the Uffizi Gallery.
According to the ranking published by the Italian magazine
Giornale dell'Arte
, which each year lists the number of visitors who come to visit museums around the world, the Florentine palace is the most visited cultural site in the country.
In total, some 1.7 million visitors flocked to the priceless masterpieces of the Renaissance in 2021, ahead of the colossal Roman monument (1,633,436 entries), the Vatican Museums (1,612,530) and the ruins of Pompeii (more than a million).
On a global scale, the Florentine establishment rises to the twentieth place.
To discover
Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection
“We are again on an upward trend which bodes well for the future”,
welcomes Eike Schmidt, director of the Offices since 2015, on Italian television.
After a final forced closure of two months due to the pandemic, the place has been redesigned to make it more attractive and accessible.
Starting with the museum being free every first Sunday of the month, including the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens.
Since May 2021, 36 new rooms -22 on the ground floor, 14 on the first floor- offer the opportunity to discover a hundred paintings dating from the 16th century.
The majority of them are on permanent display for the first time.
Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi gallery since 2015. The Italian establishment has
The Birth of Venus
by Botticelli in its collections, here in the background.
TIZIANA FABI / AFP
Although the gallery is renowned for its works by Botticelli, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Goya, Vinci, Eike Schmidt introduced contemporary art there.
From July to October 2021, the artist Giuseppe Penone took possession of the premises.
The Tree in
Verse attracts over 435,000 visitors, becoming the most visited exhibition at the Uffizi Gallery last year.
Read alsoFlorence: surprise discovery of frescoes during the restoration of the Uffizi Gallery
The latest modern interventions have been commissioned from the visual artists Gilbert and George or the British artist Endless.
In
Crotch Grab
, he stages himself hidden behind a newspaper, on which appears his favorite graffiti: the actor Mark Wahlberg posing for an underwear brand.
"The Medici, always at the forefront of progress, would be happy to see the work of Endless enter the collection",
assures Eike Schmidt in a press release.
Granting Endless access to the Renaissance pantheon made him the first street artist to be permanently exhibited at the Uffizi.