One of Italy’s Most Popular Attractions, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Reveals Plans for a Major Renovation Over the Next Two Years

The collection of treasures, many of them connected to the Medici family, includes Italian Renaissance masterpieces, a palace and a courtly garden

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

August 7, 2026 2:22 p.m.

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Officials at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence this week shared a vision for the next two years of renovations across the museum, one of the most visited in the world and home to an important collection of Italian Renaissance artwork.

Described as one of the Uffizi’s most ambitious projects to date, the nearly $58-million effort will leave virtually every space with new infrastructure or a fresh look. Dozens of projects will restore and repurpose galleries, install new lighting and signs, and create facilities intended to be more useful to visitors.

“An operation of unprecedented scale and depth is underway thanks to the extraordinary commitment of the entire staff,” Simone Verde, the museum director, said this week at a press conference, the Florentine reports. “The Uffizi will emerge even more beautiful and increasingly capable of representing one of Italy’s fundamental cultural icons.”

Plans to restore the Boboli Gardens are already underway. The Medici family laid out the original design, which today includes grottos, large fountains and a 16th-century amphitheater. Hundreds of trees and thousands of other plants have been reintroduced to the landscape, which is populated with Renaissance statues, the New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo reports.

“Managing a historical garden is like managing a collection—it’s a living museum,” Verde tells the Times.

Other projects on the horizon include the creation of a new reception area inside  Magliabechiana Hall, which overlooks the Piazza del Grano, and the conversion of the top floor of the Palazzo Pitti—a palace home for the Medici, Habsburg-Lorraine and Savoy dynasties—into a new exhibition space. New cooling towers and climate-control systems are also planned; a timely addition, as heat waves across Europe this summer have sparked new debate about the role of museums in extreme weather. 

The announcement this week is the latest chapter in ongoing work restoring and reimagining the Uffizi, which attracted 5.3 million visitors last year.

In March, an eight-year effort to refresh the gallery’s historic entrance was completed. The project included structural improvements to the Scala Lorenese, or Lorraine Staircase, and rearranged busts of members of the Medici family, who built, founded, and furnished the museum from the 16th through 18th centuries.

In June, the Uffizi announced the opening of its newly redesigned Botticelli Rooms: a permanent space housing the Renaissance artist’s most famous works, including the Annunciation (1481) fresco, Birth of Venus (1485) and Primavera (1480). Paintings were rehung in new airtight cases on walls painted a shade of so-called “Renaissance gray” that “enhances the softness and delicate chromatic nuances of Botticelli’s art,” according to a museum statement.

And in July, the Palazzo Pitti, where galleries are being refurbished, got a new entrance. “A project desired since the 1980s has only now—finally—become a reality: the relocation of Palazzo Pitti’s entrance to the southern door,” Verde said in a statement last month.

A museum representative tells Art News’ Devorah Lauter that this last round of renovations “should end—we hope—in two years from now.”

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.