Overview
The shops were butchers until 1593, when Ferdinando I evicted them for goldsmiths — partly for the smell, since the corridor above carried the grand duke between his offices and his home. Vasari built that corridor in five months in 1565 and it still runs the length of the bridge, bulging around the Mannelli tower whose owners refused to let it through. The jewellers’ trade has never left.
Highlights
Look at it rather than from it: the view from Ponte Santa Trinita, one bridge downstream, is where the photographs are taken. Walk across in the early morning before the shops open their shutters and the bridge becomes a corridor of gold. The Vasari Corridor reopened to visitors in 2024 with timed tickets sold through the Uffizi.