The Uffizi Gallery, founded in Florence in 1581, by the De Medici family, is one of the oldest museums in the world. Many important works of Italian and other schools, dating from between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, are kept here, including the largest existing collection of Tuscan Renaissance paintings.

The Uffizi Gallery covers an area of about 8.000 sq.m.. and contains one of the most important collections of art of all times, including classical sculpture and paintings on canvas and wood by 13th to 18th century Italian and foreign schools.

The Gallery of the Uffizi was also the first museum ever to be opened to the public: in fact the Grand Duke granted permission to visit it on request from the year 1591. Its four centuries of history make the Uffizi Gallery the oldest museum in the world. Cosimo I de' Medici decided to build the Palace, whose construction was started by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 and later completed by Buontalenti, who designed the famous Tribune, to house the administrative offices (or "uffizi") of the Government because Palazzo Vecchio, which also overlooks Piazza della Signoria, had become too small to hold them all. However it was his son Francesco I who was responsible for starting to turn the palace into a museum in 1581, when he closed the second floor Gallery with huge windows and arranged part of the grand-ducal collection of classical statues, medals, jewellery, weapons, paintings and scientific instruments here. The Uffizi's best-known rooms are dedicated to Florentine painting on the eve of the Renaissance (15th century); in Room 7 we find works by Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, Fra' Angelico and Piero della Francesca. Then follow the elegant Madonnas of Filippo Lippi, Pollaiolo's delightful little panels, and finally, in the newly-restored main room the mythological allegories and religious paintings of Botticelli. This unique group includes the Birth of Venus, the Primavera, the Madonnas "of the Magnificat" and "of the Pomegranate". Passing to Leonardo da Vinci and Verrocchio (Room 15) we find the Baptism of Christ by both masters, and the Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo alone.