UFFIZI GALLERY: TRANSFORMATION UNDER WAY

The most crowded and visited area of Florence’s city centre will become a huge building site and it will stay that way for four or five years.The two million visitors expected in 2007 have been warned as Italy’s best-loved museum will undergo a radical transformation and at the end the display space of 8,100 square metres will jump to 12,900. A restaurant, a cafeteria, toilets and hospitality rooms will also be installed. The Piazzale degli Uffizi, the rectangle that goes from Palazzo Vecchio to the Arno embankment, is now occupied by piles reaching from the corner of the Loggia dei Lanzi to Via Lambertesca, reducing the area of the Piazzale by one third. Scaffolding will be erected on the sides nearest to the Arno and in the vicinity of the only exit from the complex. Here, on the ancient open space known as Piazza del Grano an enormous fifty metre-tall crane is due to arrive and its twin will be erected in the coming months. This is only the start of the disruption that will be caused by a project that has been on the table for a decade, as technical preparation, political consequences and cultural impact have been discussed and awaited for forty years. Massive digging and demolition of various buildings will be required. As a consquence some museum areas will be closed temporarily and other much-visited rooms will be transformed although for now there are no precise dates for the closures or details of any works that may have to be moved. The contract, worth twenty-nine million euros, will be handled by a Bologna-based consortium of ten companies that will implement preparatory work carried out by the Sinter company, under the direction of engineer Alessandro Chimenti. The project will involve leading figures such as the superintendent for the environment, Paola Grifoni, the site supervisor, and the architect Adolfo Natalini. A crucial part of the project drawn up by Natalini is now provoking opposition from both within and outside the team. Works are under way, given the need to expand the exhibition spaces, improve services and bring the Uffizi’s venerable electricity and plumbing systems up to date. One of the most widely criticised aspects of the project is the stairs and lifts.The new east-sector staircase will have its base in the ancient church of San Pier Scheraggio, where since the eleventh century worshippers have included Dante and Boccaccio, and the west wing’s descent and ascent block actually encroaches on the base of the Loggia dei Lanzi, the most famous open-air museum in the world. Construction will involve attacking hallowed, untouchable, stonework. Historians and archaeologists have protested about the lack of specific consultation on the subsoil, which had already been called into question by renewed plans to build the controversial Isozaki entrance canopy. Another contested point is the restructuring of the Botticelli and Leonardo rooms, which attract large numbers of visitors and are poorly lit. The project includes plans to insert glazing under the trusses to enable the millions of visitors to admire Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring or Leonardo’s Annunciation in direct natural light.