A secretive Renaissance-era passageway in Florence connecting the Uffizi Galleries to the Palazzo Pitti, the Medicis’ former residence, has opened to the public for the first time in its nearly 500-year history following an €11 million ($11.4 million) restoration.

By the 1560s, Cosimo I de Medici had used military might and diplomatic savvy to reestablish Florence’s regional dominance. A masterstroke came in 1565 with a seminal dynastic alliance: marrying his son Francisco to Joanna the Archduchess of Austria. In addition to hosting Florence’s most lavish wedding celebrations, Cosimo hoped to impress his Habsburg guests with some Florentine ingenuity by constructing an enclosed passageway that offered views of the city.

Named the Vasari Corridor after Giorgio Vasari architect, painter, and historian, who designed it, the nearly 2500-feet-long passageway was completed in five months. For two centuries it would offer the Medici swift and safe passage between their residence and the seat of government.

A view of the Vasari Corridor on the day of its reopening on December 20, 2024 in Florence, Italy. Photo by Laura Lezza/Getty Images.

It runs from the Uffizi across the fabled Ponte Vecchio, around the Mannelli Tower, through the church of Santa Felicita (a private balcony gave access to mass without having to mix with the masses), and exists near the Buontalenti Grotto through which the Palazzo Pitti courtyard is reached.

Vasari took inspiration from the Passetto in Rome, which connects the Vatican Palace to Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Bramante Corridor, which connects the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to the Belvedere Courtyard. Along with the Uffizi complex, the corridor was built as part of a broader Medici project to revitalize the area of Florence between the Arno river and the Palazzo Vecchio.

In recent decades, the Vasari Corridor has only been open to scholars and private tours. Now, it will be accessible to anyone willing to pay an additional €18 ($19) on top of the €25 ($26) ticket to the Uffizi Galleries. After closing in 2016, the passageway was subject to an 18-month study which determined that it should be returned to its original 16th-century appearance (i.e. without the 1,000 paintings that had lined it in the 20th-century).

A view of the Vasari Corridor from the Boboli Gardens on the day of its reopening on December 20, 2024 in Florence, Italy. Photo: Laura Lezza/Getty Images.

The redevelopment has made the Vasari Corridor more structurally sound, wheelchair accessible, and has introduced emergency exits and video surveillance. Its completion after roughly eight years of work fulfills a promise, said the Uffizi’s director Simone Verde.

“Visitors can cross the River Arno, appreciating the vastness, coherence, and richness of the Medici citadel of power and the arts,” Verde said in a statement. “Its reopening is part of the current systematic efforts to revitalise the museum, focused equally on the Uffizi, Boboli, and Palazzo Pitti.”

The passageway would go on to inspire the French to connect the old Louvre Palace with the Tuileries Palace in Paris and become intertwined with Florence’s history.