Insider's Guide to The Piazalle Degli Uffizi, Florence

Out of all the squares in Florence, the Piazelle degli Uffizi is one of its show pieces. Featuring the crenelate thirteenth century Palazzo Vecchio, the Neptune fountain of Ammanati and the world reknowned Uffizi Gallery, this is a great place to visit for anyone on a trip to Florence. You might even find some excellent places to stay in the area.

Art lovers will love the Uffizi Gallery, possibly the greatest museum of art created during the Renaissance that the world has known. It occupies the building that once held the offices of the Medicis, and currently holds a large percentage of the most celebrated paintings in Italy. There's a room with nothing buy paintings by the famous Botticelli, as well fantastic Titians and Michelangelos, too.

Just make sure that if you're going to be visiting the Uffizi, you have a ticket booked in advance. The queues to buy tickets at the door are so long and slow moving that an architectural project for the entryway of the museum has been proposed in the past, just to give visitors something to look at on their way in. However, the museum is definitely worth it.

Despite overshadowing most other things with its reputation, the Uffizi isn't the only thing in this area. One of the most photographed bridges on the continent, the whimsical fourteenth century Ponte Vecchio, is just down the river, and features many tiny but interesting jewelry shops on a narrow river crossing.

The Palazzo Vecchio is also an attraction, and has been since the mid sixteenth century when Cosimo de'Medici moved his whole family out of their previous palace and into this one, making it the Ducal Palace of Florence. This meant that the governing body of the city had to move, and the building currently housing the Uffizi Gallery was built in the 1560s. A corridor over the Ponte Vecchio was build from the Palazzo, through the Palazzo degli Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti in 1565.

The Palazzo degli Uffizi took in the Romanesque church San Piero Scheraggio as well as the old customs building where coinage was minted, and artists's workshops were constructed in the area as well. There were also rooms created for natural science and alchemical study and even a theater in the latter part of the century, creating the venue for the performance of history's first operas.

This U shaped palace wraps around the Piazzele degli Uffizi below, going from the Palazzo Vecchio down to the Arno, then coming back to the Loggia dei Lanzi. The ground floor features a series of colonnades with alternating pillars and columns, and you can still find stall owners selling here as well as busy crowds. Offices and artworks are housed up above.

While the Palazzo degli Uffizi might look uniform from the outside, the inside is another story, and a lot more interesting from an architectural point of view, since there are fourteenth through seventeenth century buildings and interiors in it. The first building to use iron reinforcement and cement (since the Roman era), this building has a lot to offer, in addition to the art inside!

If you're going to be visiting Florence, you owe it to yourself to check out all the attractions in this area, and to see if any of the great Florence apartments around the Piazalle degli Uffizi are what you're looking for. This area won't disappoint! You can review our range of Uffizi apartments here.