Explore the Uffizi Gallery in Florence on a small-group tour. Learn about the women who shaped its art, from artists to muses, and the Medici duchess who preserved the collection.
Meet your guide near the Uffizi Gallery and step inside with reserved entry. Start with the Renaissance, where women appear on almost every wall but rarely had a name or a voice. Stand before Piero della Francesca's portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, and find out who Battista Sforza really was. At Botticelli's Birth of Venus, separate the legend of Simonetta Vespucci from the facts. Look Eleonora di Toledo in the eye in Bronzino's portrait, and learn how a Spanish duchess helped shape Medici Florence.
Then meet the women who held the brush. Artemisia Gentileschi was the first woman admitted to Florence's Academy of the Arts of Drawing, and her Judith Slaying Holofernes is one of the most powerful paintings in the building. Your guide explains why it still shocks visitors four centuries later, and what her life tells us about being a woman artist in the 1600s.
The tour ends with the woman you have to thank for everything you just saw. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, the last of her family, signed a pact in 1737 that left the Medici collections to Florence forever, on one condition: they must never leave the city.
You still see the Uffizi's great masterpieces, from Botticelli to Leonardo, but you'll leave seeing them differently.
