See the Sprawling Secret Passageway Built for Florence’s Elite 450 Years Ago

In 1565, a simple, elegant hallway was built atop Ponte Vecchio (or the Old Bridge) in Florence. The passage was restricted to Florentine elites, who used it to easily traverse the Arno River without mingling with passersby on the bridge’s lower levels. Now, after years of restoration and repair, the once-secret hall has reopened to the public.

The passageway—known as the Vasari Corridor—connects Florence’s lush Boboli Gardens to the world-famous Uffizi Galleries, an art museum boasting works such as Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Caravaggio’s Medusa.

According to a statement from the Uffizi Galleries, the 2,500-foot-long Vasari Corridor was commissioned by the second duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici of the infamous Medici family, which controlled Tuscany for much of the time between the 15th and 18th centuries. As Alessandro Giuli, the Italian culture minister, says in the statement, the Medicis would walk the Vasari Corridor en route from their home, Palazzo Pitti, to their workplace, Palazzo Vecchio, the government headquarters.

The corridor is named for its designer, Giorgio Vasari, a Renaissance artist, architect and writer. Vasari modeled the passage on a similar structure in Rome. Entrants descend 58 steps from the second floor of the Uffizi to a covered brick walkway alongside the river—visible through porthole windows—before continuing across Ponte Vecchio, according to CNN’s Julia Buckley.

“The panoramic aspect has certainly always made the passageway interesting,” as art historian Simona Pasquinucci, a curator at the Uffizi Galleries, tells the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida. “It was interesting for Cosimo to more or less check what was happening in his city from these windows. Back then, the river was much livelier, with all the fisheries, mills and other activities on and around the bridge.”

Per the Guardian, the Medicis used the Vasari Passage to impress guests—a practice that would continue through the 20th century. In fact, the large windows that line the passageway’s bridge section weren’t actually added until the 1930s: Benito Mussolini had them installed before welcoming Adolf Hitler to Florence in 1938.

The Vasari Corridor was last restored in the 1990s, per the statement. Officials closed the hallway in 2016 because it didn’t meet safety regulations. In 2022, an approximately $10 million restoration project began, which ended in late 2024.

The corridor is a “parallel city within the city” that has remained a “mythical place for the Western world,” as Uffizi director Simone Verde tells CNN. He adds that the corridor’s construction illuminates the role of culture in the Medicis’ rule.

“This was new to the Renaissance—the cultural element of government,” says Verde. “The culture created here was the motor for all the courts of modern Europe.”

Restricted for centuries to aristocrats, officials and eventually study groups, the Vasari Corridor’s views are now available to ticketed Uffizi visitors for €18 (around $19) in addition to the galleries’ €25 (about $26) entrance fee. As Giuli says in the statement, “Accessibility, safety and energy sustainability define a route that, through its intricate historical, urban and monumental layers, allows visitors to admire Florence in all its splendor.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.