Visiting Florence - The Uffizi Queue

Read the guide books, and they’ll tell you the Uffizi Gallery is regarded as a "must see". But if you have only a few days in Florence, do your research before you decide whether the time it takes to get through the gallery's doors is really worth it.

On our last European holiday, we spent hours in the Louvre (in Paris ) and the Prado (in Madrid) and could easily have spent another day in either of them - but we were left wondering why we’d bothered to queue for nearly 3 hours to get into the Uffizi, because it was such a let-down. It's not that we’re philistines, by any means - my husband is a history buff with a special interest in Italian art, and even he was disappointed.

When you arrive outside the Uffizi, you'll see two queues. The shorter one is for people who have booked in advance, who naturally get priority - although they may still queue for an hour or so.

The other queue, for those who haven't booked in advance, is long - very, very long! The wait can be as long as 5 or 6 hours, especially at peak times of year. There's an indicator at the front of the queue, displaying an estimate of how long you can expect to wait - and it's usually pretty accurate.

Don't underestimate how tiring it is to stand in a queue, on concrete, for several hours - especially if you're in Florence in the middle of a hot Italian summer.

When you combine the long, tedious wait with the time it takes to tour the gallery, a visit to the Uffizi can wipe out a whole day. If your time in Florence is limited, you’ll have missed the chance to visit a wealth of other art galleries, museums and historical sites instead, many of them containing treasures just as precious as those in the Uffizi. Not to mention the fabulous shopping!

We were in Florence in April - not a busy time of year, because the weather is still cool - and yet we had a wait of 3 hours. By the time we got into the gallery, all we wanted to to do was head for their cafe so we could sit down and recover! Needless to say, when we got there, there wasn't a free table in sight, so we grabbed a drink (and some photos from the terrace) and continued our tour of the gallery.

Our tiredness may have affected our enjoyment of the Uffizi, but I don't believe that was the main reason for our disappointment.

There’s no denying the paintings in the Uffizi are masterpieces. The trouble is they’re so poorly presented, you’re not seeing them at their best. I expected to be blown away at the sight of an original Botticelli, but in fact most of the paintings looked muted and flat compared to the reproductions we’re all so familiar with.

I’d hate to think the paintings are deteriorating – I think it was just that the lighting was so poor. In some rooms, it was hard to make anything out in the pervading gloom!

I know low lighting helps protect paintings, but surely they didn’t have to go that far - the Louvre and the Prado have plenty of natural light and the artworks positively glow.

Those two galleries also have informative plaques beside their artworks, whereas the Uffizi provided almost nothing. Add to that the down-at-heel state of the building, and it wasn’t a place to linger.

I’d have to say that my visit to the Uffizi is my least favourite memory from what was otherwise an awesome visit to Florence.

Unless you can book in advance, my advice would be to give it a miss. In the time you spend queuing to see the Uffizi, you could visit two other galleries - and there are so many fantastic ones to choose from in Florence, you won't be disappointed!

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All text copyright Marisa Wright.

Photo credits: Queue indicator by author; queue photo by xiquihosilva, interior by Cebete, Florence vista by Bjorn Giesenbauer.