Vasari Corridor

Built in 1565, in a hurry, for a wedding

Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari to link Palazzo Vecchio, where the government sat, with Palazzo Pitti, where the family lived, across the river. The museum's own page puts the construction in 1565 and the length at about 750 metres; Wikipedia adds that the commission came in 1564 and the work was finished in time for the marriage of Cosimo's son Francesco, which is the sort of deadline that explains why it was built above existing buildings rather than through them.

The route runs out of the government palace, along the top of the gallery block, over the old bridge, past the church of Santa Felicita — where a window let the family hear Mass without entering the church — and down into the Boboli Gardens. At the south-east corner of the bridge it detours around the Torre dei Mannelli on brackets, because the family that owned the tower refused to let it be cut through.

Closed in 2016, open again on a special ticket

The corridor shut in 2016 because it did not meet safety standards: one narrow route, few exits, no way to evacuate a crowd quickly. The restoration dealt with the fire and escape requirements as much as with the fabric, and the museum now describes the corridor as accessible again with a special ticket. Wikipedia dates the reopening to December 2024; the official page gives no month, so treat the date as secondary.

What this means in practice is that the corridor is not a room in the museum you wander into. It is a scheduled, one-way, capacity-controlled walk, and every rule below follows from that.

What hangs inside — and what no longer does

For decades the corridor's draw was the self-portrait collection, and older guidebooks still describe it that way. Those works are not the reason to go now: the museum reorganised the display when it reopened and its own pages do not publish a room-by-room list of what is currently hung. We are not going to invent one. If a specific painting is the reason you want the ticket, check the museum's news page for the current display before you book.

What is certain is the architecture and the windows. The walk is long, low and narrow, the light comes in from the river side, and the stretch above the bridge — small square openings looking straight down the Arno — is the part everybody photographs.

The corridor is entered from inside the gallery, on the first floor, at the Room D19 Meeting Point — the museum calls it the Venetian small Chapel. It is not signposted from the street and there is no separate street door, which is the single most common reason people miss their slot.

With a day ticket, your gallery entry is timed two hours before the corridor slot. That is deliberate: the museum expects you to be inside already. Be at the meeting point five minutes before the time printed on the ticket, because the official wording is blunt — failing to show up on time entails the loss of the right to enter, and the ticket does not refund. On a Friday evening the margin is ten minutes rather than five.

The walk is one way. You do not come back out into the gallery: the corridor descends and releases you into the Boboli Gardens, and from there you walk out to Piazza Pitti. If you left a coat in the cloakroom on the far side of the river, retrieve it before you go in. Day groups start at 10:15 and the last group of the day leaves at 16:35, so a 16:00 arrival at the ticket desk is already too late.

The museum states neither a minimum age nor a group size for the day visit, and it does not publish how long the day walk takes. The one duration on record is the Friday evening version at about 35 minutes; a day walk with a guide setting the pace is likely to run longer, but nobody official says so.

• Entrance: Room D19 Meeting Point, first floor of the gallery — not from the street
• Be there five minutes early by day, ten minutes early on Friday evenings, or you lose the slot
• Tickets are named, personal, non-transferable and non-refundable
• One way only: you exit through the Boboli Gardens to Piazza Pitti
• Day slots run 10:15 to a last departure at 16:35, Tuesday to Sunday

From 3 July to 20 November 2026 the corridor opens on Friday evenings from 19:00 to 23:00 with a ticket of its own, and this is the only way to walk it without buying the gallery. It costs €20 on the day or €24 booked ahead (about $23 or $28), against €43 for the day combination, and it takes about 35 minutes.

Slots run every twenty minutes from 19:00, with the last admission at 21:50, and each group holds 25 people including any carers and private guides, accompanied by museum staff. The ticket includes passage through the gallery building to reach the meeting point but does not admit you to any of the galleries — it is the corridor and nothing else. The distance is roughly a kilometre once you add the hundred metres through the Boboli Gardens to the exit.

The obvious catch is the date. After 20 November 2026 the evening opening stops and the €43 day ticket is the only route left, so if your trip falls in the window and a Friday is free, this is the version to take. Which months the evenings run in matters more than usual here.

• 3 July to 20 November 2026, Fridays only, 19:00–23:00
• Slots at 19:00, 19:20, 19:40, 20:00, 20:20, 20:40, 21:00, 21:20 and 21:50
• €20 same-day, €24 booked ahead; €2 reduced for EU citizens aged 18 to 25
• Groups of 25 with museum staff; about 35 minutes; no gallery visit included

Do the subtraction before you decide. The gallery on its own is €25 on the day; with the corridor it is €43. You are paying about €18 (roughly $21) for a walk of 750 metres, and the honest answer is that it buys an experience rather than a collection: the enclosed passage, the windows over the river, the sensation of crossing the Arno above everybody's heads on a private street.

Take it if you have been in the gallery before and do not need three hours in it; if you are in town on a Friday evening between July and 20 November, when the same walk costs €20 and takes 35 minutes; or if you were already buying the five-day combined pass, where the corridor version costs €58 rather than €40 and spreads across three sites.

Skip it if this is your only day in Florence. The day ticket asks you to be inside the museum two hours before the slot, so the corridor effectively consumes an entire half-day of a schedule that also wants the cathedral square and the David. Skip it too if the self-portraits are the reason you were going, because the display has changed and the museum does not publish what is currently hung. And skip it if refund flexibility matters: the official ticket does not refund at all, which is why the small-group tour with the add-on exists.

Our pick, for a second visit with a free Friday: the €20 evening walk. For a first visit with a full day to give it: the €47 advance combination, booked early enough to choose a 10:15 corridor slot and get the museum done before the crowd.

The city sightseeing card does not cover the corridor. Cardholders pay a €20 supplement (about $23) per walk, on the same reservation terms as everyone else, so the card is not a way in — what the card does and does not cover is worth reading before you buy either.

The museums' own passes work differently. The five-day combined pass is €40 for the gallery, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, or €58 with one corridor walk included, which makes the corridor cheaper inside the pass than outside it. The annual pass is €80 for one person or €120 for a family, and it carries a €20 fee for each corridor access rather than including it; on the family version each adult pays that €20 and minors book free. In all cases the corridor still needs a reservation and is still limited to the slots left, so an annual pass buys you a price, not a place.

Reduced and free categories follow the state-museum rules: €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 with ID, free under 18. Free-admission days apply when they do not fall on a Monday, but you still need to reserve and the slots are the same handful as any other day. Steps and the checkout order for all of this sit on the gallery ticket page.

For the day ticket, book the 10:15 corridor slot and an 08:15 museum entry. Two hours is enough for the main floor at a brisk pace, the corridor puts you across the river before noon, and you come out in the Boboli Gardens with the afternoon free on the Oltrarno side. Lunch happens near Piazza Pitti, not back in the centre, because you are not crossing the river again for a while.

For the Friday evening walk, treat it as the last thing of the day: a 20:00 or 20:20 slot after dinner, out through the gardens, and the bridge below on the walk home. The three-day Florence plan swaps its Friday evening for exactly this, and the things to do list shows what else stays open late.

The rest of the city, priced and timed the same way, is on this Florence guide.