The Uffizi Gallery is known worldwide. And yet from the outside it is easy to overlook one of the most impressive aspects of the building, even when looking directly at it.
And that’s a pity, because you are missing out if you don’t take a few minutes to look at the outside of the building from across the river.
The Uffizi is just a few minutes walk from the famous Ponte Vecchio and next to the Palazzo Vecchio. Yet from the river it simply blends in to the panorama of buildings along the bank of the River Arno.
There it is with the three huge arches that take you into a quadrangle that recedes in a succession of arches. Because it is not locked away behind doors, it is easy to walk through it and simply not realise that it is the Uffizi at street-level.
And being open at both ends, it has the feel of a public space – perhaps the feel of a Roman forum.
Here are two people walking through the quadrangle. How modern.
At the same time we were struck by how, when seen from across the Arno, the people on the bank of the river look like figures from a Canaletto painting.
In some ways, time has not changed anything.
In the Gallery
Of course the treasures on view are wonderful and well worth seeing. But what stands out in our memory is the long, long corridor that connected the rooms on the upper floor.
