Private and small-group Vasari Corridor tours
Why a guide is worth more here than it used to be
For forty-three years the corridor was a picture gallery, and a visitor with a good eye could work most of it out unaided. That corridor is gone. The 2016 to 2024 restoration stripped the passage back to bare architecture and the self-portraits moved into twelve rooms inside the gallery in 2023, so what you now walk through is a long, bright, empty road with almost nothing on it to read. The interest is in why it exists, and that is carried entirely by whoever is talking. A guide has more to do in the corridor today, not less.
Some of it is genuinely hard to spot alone: the point where the passage bends around the Mannelli family’s tower, because they refused to have it demolished for the Medici and won; the railed balcony above the interior of Santa Felicita, from which the Grand Duke’s family heard mass without sitting in the congregation; the reason the butchers were moved off the Ponte Vecchio and goldsmiths put there instead by 1593. Our page on what you see inside covers the same ground if you would rather do the reading yourself.
The private tour: five languages, your own party
This is the only product here offered in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German, which is decisive if English is not your first language and you would rather not spend the morning translating for the rest of your family. The party is yours, so the pace is yours: stop at a window over the Arno for as long as you like, or move through the gallery quickly and give the time to the passage. It meets at the Neptune Fountain on Piazza della Signoria. Bags, backpacks, food and plastic bottles are excluded, and the security check is where slow entries happen, so carry as little as you can.
Gina, writing on GetYourGuide, said it was the best of several Florence tours she had taken. That is the pattern in the private reviews generally: people rate the attention rather than the itinerary.
Max nine: a short list of works, read properly
The Masterworks tour is deliberately narrow. Instead of sweeping the whole gallery it takes a short list of works and stays with them, and it is sold with the party capped at nine. Two booking options exist, gallery only or gallery plus the Medici Passage, and the longer one includes re-entry to the Uffizi after the passage, which is the detail most people miss when they compare it against the others. It meets at the Leonardo da Vinci statue — look for the blue flag — and runs in English. Boboli entry is not included.
Its reviewers describe the same two things. Jackie, from the United States, noticed the guide steering the group through crowded rooms to the best sightline for each painting. Stefanie, also American, wrote about technique, paint and light rather than names and dates. If you want the headline works looked at closely, this is the format that does it.
Small-group: guided in the gallery, alone in the passage
The small-group tour is the middle option and the one with the caveat. A licensed guide leads the Uffizi portion for a small group; the corridor is an option on some booking choices, and it is walked one-way and unguided. The guide does not come in with you. You still get the walk, but if the reason you are paying for a guide is the corridor itself, this is the wrong product and one of the two above is the right one. It meets at the Leonardo da Vinci statue, runs in English with headsets when the group needs them, and excludes food, hotel pickup and the Pitti and Boboli interiors.
Susan, from Canada, valued the guide concentrating on a handful of important works instead of everything. Jonathan, from the United States, thought the stories behind the paintings were nearly as interesting as the paintings. Both are verdicts on the gallery, which tells you where this product puts its effort.
The three, side by side
What separates them, with price and length left out on purpose: both change by booking option and by date, and the widget below quotes the current ones.
Small groupCorridor optionUffizi Small-Group Guided Tour with Vasari Corridor Access
Max 9 peopleCorridor optionUffizi Masterworks Tour (Max 9) with the Medici Passage
PrivateCorridor access includedVasari Corridor & Uffizi Gallery Exclusive Private Tour
| Uffizi Small-Group Guided Tour with Vasari Corridor Access | Uffizi Masterworks Tour (Max 9) with the Medici Passage | Fully privateVasari Corridor & Uffizi Gallery Exclusive Private Tour | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format | Licensed guide, small group | Guided, capped at nine as sold | Private party, guide throughout |
| Guide inside the corridor | No, walked one way unguided | Check the booking option | Yes, on the corridor option |
| Languages | English | English | Italian, English, Spanish, French, German |
| Where it starts | The Leonardo da Vinci statue | The Leonardo statue, blue flag | The Neptune Fountain |
| Best for | A first pass at the gallery | Reading a few works closely | Non-English speakers, and questions |
| View → | View → | Book this → |
Settle the language before you settle the day. On the private product the language is chosen at the booking stage and the one you want may not run on every date, so fix that first and fit the rest of the itinerary around it.
Is the extra worth it?
Sometimes not. If your group reads well, the passage is short enough that a determined self-guided visitor loses little, and the money is often better spent on the gallery than on the corridor. Where the extra earns itself is with a family that does not share a language, with anyone who wants to ask questions rather than receive a script, and with visitors who came to Florence for the Medici rather than for the paintings. We set the case out both ways in the full comparison of every booking.
Live dates and prices
The widget below is the private tour. Pick a date and a language to see what is running and what it currently costs; we do not print figures here, because they move.
Frequently asked questions
Is a private tour worth it just for the corridor?
On its own, rarely. The passage is walked one way and it is short, so most of what you are buying is the gallery either side of it. The argument for going private is the language choice, the pace, and being able to ask questions. If you are still weighing the whole thing up, our verdict page is blunter about it than this one.
Which languages can we book a guide in?
The private product is offered in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German, the widest spread of any corridor booking we track. The Masterworks tour and the small-group tour run in English, and one other guided product runs in Spanish and English. Confirm the language on the booking option itself, since it is set per departure rather than per product.
Can a wheelchair user book a private tour?
The corridor has ramps, platforms and lifts and the museum describes it as wheelchair accessible, but each operator sets its own terms, and one guided product elsewhere on this site states outright that it is not suitable for wheelchair users. Ask through the booking page before you pay, and read our accessibility notes for what the museum does and does not provide.
How much more does a private guide cost?
We do not print figures, because they change by date and by booking option and a stale number is worse than none. The shape is steady enough to describe: self-guided combined tickets sit at the bottom of the range and private guided tours at the top, with the small-group formats between them. What determines the price covers which extras sit outside the ticket; the widget above carries the live figure.