Image: Museo delle Porcellane, Florence
The Uffizi Galleries in Florence have unveiled a sweeping renovation program totaling about €50 million, with work already underway or about to begin across the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Giardino di Boboli. The museum said the projects, presented on 5 August 2026, will unfold over the next two years and include new exhibitions layouts, restorations, lighting upgrades, safety improvements, and a broad rethinking of visitor services and circulation throughout the complex.
According to the museum’s announcement, the initiative touches nearly every part of the institution’s historic footprint. At the Uffizi, the plan includes new introductory rooms on the history of the collections on the ground floor, a redesigned welcome and access-control area in the Aula Magliabechiana, and the reopening of the Flemish rooms with a revised museographic system, new spacing devices and updated lighting. The museum also listed a new setup for the Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Castagno room, a filological restoration of the inscription alcove, and the reopening of spaces including the room with Andrea del Castagno’s portraits of illustrious men and the ancient inscriptions alcove.
Palazzo Pitti is set for extensive intervention as well. The museum cited work on the Tesoro dei Granduchi, including ordinary building and technical maintenance and a new display, along with new lighting in the Galleria Palatina’s Sala di Giove, Sala di Saturno, Sala dell’Iliade and the Sala Bianca. Other projects include restoration of the Volterrano quarter, the Music Room, the mezzanine known as the “Piano degli Occhi,” and the reopening or reconfiguration of access areas, including a new entrance to Palazzo Pitti.
In the Giardino di Boboli, the program ranges from conservation work to functional recovery. The museum highlighted restoration of the Amphitheatre, the Neptune Fountain and the Isola basin, along with work on the Garden of the Knight, the Pagliere complex in the Royal Stables area, the Medinille greenhouse, and the sculptures in Boboli. The announcement also notes new internal circulation routes for the garden and a continuing cycle of new plantings, with more than 2,500 new plants added in the last year.
The museum said upgrades to environmental systems and conservation safeguards are a major component of the plan, including expanded air-treatment and climate-control equipment. It also listed new interpretive and wayfinding elements across the complex, from updated labels for Uffizi works to corridor signage, new room screens and other mediation tools. The institution framed the programme as one of the largest coordinated efforts in its recent history, involving a broad staff-led push after two years of planning and administrative procedures.
Director Simone Verde said in the museum’s statement that the projects were made possible by the commitment of the Uffizi staff and would leave the complex “even more beautiful” and more fitting to represent one of Italy’s central cultural icons. The announcement does not identify a single reopening date for the full programme, but says the interventions are scheduled to transform the complex over the next two years.
