The Times Crowns The Uffizi The World’s Best Art Gallery

The British newspaper ‘The Times’ has crowned Florence’s Uffizi Gallery the best art gallery in the world. ‘The Times’ invited an expert team of culture lovers to nominate their 50 greatest art galleries in the world. The selected art critics awarded the Uffizi Gallery the first-place ranking in the survey of “The World’s 50 Greatest Galleries”, beating the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Museum of Modern Art in New York to second, third and fourth places respectively. The Louvre in Paris takes eighth place in the rankings. ‘The Times’ said of the Uffizi Gallery: “The word masterpiece can be bandied about too easily in Italy but the Uffizi is packed with them. It was here that the Medici family displayed its magnificent collections. The gallery’s architect, Giorgio Vasari, said it was here that the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance would gather ‘for beauty, for work and for recreation’. Now their cultural splendours adorn the courtyards and walls with a host of treasures from the serene beauties of an earlier medieval era to the exuberant dramas of the high Baroque.” The newspaper advises readers not to miss Boticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’. For ‘The Times’, Italy’s standing as a top destination for art lovers does not end there. The survey ranks Rome’s Borghese Gallery in 12th place, the Vatican Museums in 19th place and Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in 49th place.