The tour of the Uffizi gallery can take anywhere from one hour and thirty minutes to three hours. The museum exhibits two thousand works of art and has just as many in storage. The paintings are displayed in chronological order according to geographical schools of painting; hence the Uffizi is a museum par- excellence for a general survey in art history. The first room starts with the Enthroned Madonnas by Giotto, Cimabue and Duccio along with other Tuscan painters of the thirteenth century; therefore one starts at the beginning, where figures imbibed with feeling and pathos for the first time in Italian art history.

The survey continues to the Sienese and Florentine schools of painting of the fourteenth century on to The Birth of Venus and The Allegory of Spring by Botticelli, then the Journey of the Wise Men by Leonardo, the Tondo Doni - the only detached painting done by Michelangelo. Raphaels follow with the Madonna of the Goldfinch, Titian's Venus from Urbino and Flora. The seventeenth century is represented by masterpieces by Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, etc. The survey ends in the rooms dedicated to the great masters of European painting of the eighteenth century.

Museo Arecheologico

The city of Florence hosts sixty-nine other museums, some very important ones like the Archeological Museum which contains not only the fascinating Etruscan collections or the beautiful Greek vases, but also it has one of the most famous Egyptian collections in the world after Cairo and Turin.

The Bargello Museum, housed in a building which dates back to 1255, contains sculptures by Michelangelo and Donatello and many other important Florentine sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is also an incredible collection containing objects of ivory, ceramics, glazed terracottas by the Della Robbia workshop, ancient weapons and armatures.

Briefly, do not forget the Opera del Duomo museum which has sculptures and paintings of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery.