Tag: tuscany

The Portico Beneath Florence’s Vasari Corridor.
Walking between Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi, it is hard not to notice this short covered passage running above the pedestrian route. It is one of those details of Florence that can easily be overlooked when focusing only on the city’s most famous landmarks, but it becomes much more interesting when you stop and look up.
This photograph focuses on the portico itself, which supports the famous Vasari Corridor, the elevated passage running through this part of Florence’s historic centre. What caught my attention was the way such an important structure in the city’s history fits almost naturally into the architecture surrounding Ponte Vecchio.
When thinking about what to see in Florence, Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi are naturally among the first places that come to mind. Yet between these two famous landmarks there are countless architectural details that reveal a less obvious side of the city. This portico is one of those details I wanted to capture with my camera.
The Vasari Corridor was built in the sixteenth century for Cosimo I de’ Medici and designed by Giorgio Vasari. Its purpose was to allow the Medici family to move between Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti without having to use the ordinary city streets. It is therefore often described as a kind of secret passage, although that expression does not really convey the full story behind it.
The detail I find most interesting is the reason for its construction. The corridor allowed the Medici to cross an important part of Florence while remaining separated, to some extent, from everyday street life. The route passed above Ponte Vecchio, continued alongside the Uffizi and crossed the Arno, creating a remarkable private route within the city’s urban fabric.
From below, however, none of this history is immediately obvious. What you see is mainly the portico, a structure that could easily appear to be just another architectural element of the street. That contrast is what interested me: behind an apparently secondary feature is one of the most unusual architectural projects of Medici Florence.
The scene photographed here is therefore right in central Florence, in Tuscany, Italy, where visitors constantly pass on their way to Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi and the other landmarks of the historic centre. Yet taking a moment to look carefully reveals that even the less imposing structures have their own stories.
This photograph came from that particular way of looking at a city. I did not need to photograph Ponte Vecchio once again from its classic viewpoint. This time I was interested in what lies beneath the corridor, from the perspective of someone walking along the street and looking up at a structure originally designed to be experienced from above.
The Vasari Corridor is also part of a much wider route through the historic centre of Florence, and its relationship with the Uffizi and Palazzo Vecchio makes the Medici family’s architectural and political project particularly clear. It is a fascinating example of how architecture can also be used to shape movement and access within a city.
If you are visiting Florence and looking for details beyond the usual landmarks, this is exactly the kind of feature worth noticing. The portico itself may only occupy a small part of the scene, but knowing what stands above it changes the way you see the entire passage between Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi.
I like photographs that begin with something apparently ordinary and then lead me towards a story I had not considered from quite the same angle before. That is what happened here. By photographing the portico from below, I wanted to show a less obvious part of the Vasari Corridor and let the structure itself suggest the history above my head.
As in other posts where I have photographed architectural details in historic cities, this image came from observation rather than from looking for the classic panorama. Florence constantly offers these opportunities, especially when you walk slowly and allow your attention to move beyond the places that normally dominate the view.

Next time you walk between Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi, will you stop and look at the portico beneath the Vasari Corridor? Add a comment or go to the bottom of the site to read what other visitors have written.

Photo taken with Canon EOS M100 and Canon EF-S 10-18 lens.

To see all the photos I took in the beautiful Tuscan town, click here: