A revamped Uffizi Galleries in Florence reopened to the public on Tuesday after more than two months of closure, offering visitors a first glimpse of 2,000 sq. m of new exhibition space containing never before displayed works.
The museum recorded 1,516 visitors on day one of the reopening, suggesting a nascent recovery after ticket sales have been decimated during the lockdowns.
“There is a great thirst for culture,” Eike Schmidt, the museum’s director, told the ANSA news agency yesterday. “We hope that the recovery can be solid and permanent. We are optimistic.”
Italy’s most visited museum has been hit hard by the pandemic, with annual visitors falling to 1.2 million last year from 4.4 million the year before as successive lockdowns have forced repeated closures. Daily visitors averaged between 5,000 and 6,000 before the pandemic, reaching 12,000 on busy days, an Uffizi spokesman tells