“Galleria degli Uffizi” or The Uffizi Gallery, is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world. It is housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a beautiful palace in Florence, Italy.

Today, I was very excited about visiting the Uffizi Gallery! It was a dream coming true.
For an art lover, seeing the works of the Grand Masters (Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Donatello…) is actually a big deal. And I have to thank my husband for that

We went in the afternoon, not worrying about the long lines in front of the museum, because of our membership in “The Amici Degli Uffizi”. We went to gate number 2, a nice lady handed us our tickets and directed us to the entry.
I was a bit mad because it was forbidden to take photos, and despite that, many couples were taking out their small point & shoot digital cameras and snapping shots secretly. I couldn’t do the same with my 0.703 Kilograms Nikon D90!

We wandered around the rooms and corridors of the Uffizi, amazed by it’s grandeur and beauty, the ceiling frescoes and the large collection of roman sculptures and paintings.

The most popular paintings housed by the museum:

• Sandro Botticelli (Primavera, Birth of Venus,  Adoration of the Magi)
• Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi)
• Albrecht Dürer (The Adoration of the Magi)
• Michelangelo (The Doni Tondo)
• Raphael (Madonna of the Goldfinch, Luigi de’ Rossi)
• Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino)
• Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa)
• Rembrandt Van Rijn (The two selfportraits [young & old], and a portrait of an old man)

After checking all the floors and rooms, we were exhausted. Abdallah wanted to check the “Bar” and the terrace. We took some nice pictures of Palazzio Vecchio and had two Espressos and prepared to leave.

We walked back to where we started still admiring the artwork while trying to find the “Uscita” (Exit). But you couldn’t go out the same way you get in. Instead, we had to walk all the way back to the second corridor… Getting out of the museum, however was not going to be that easy. We went down to the seond floor (Abdallah thought that floor was deserted because the windows were all shut from the outside). There we were lead through a maze of more artwork. We found Caravagio’s Medusa shield there for example. We were out of time, so we had to rush out. But after 15 minutes we were still there!

The ground floor wasn’t easier to get out of either. Every time you think you found an exit there would be yet another sign telling you to go to the next room. We went through a maze of gift shops, bookshops, etc, until finally there was the exit taking us to a backstreet somewhere in the center of Firenze.

Here are some photos taken from the Piazza Della Signoria, near the Uffizi Palace.