Florence: expansion of Santa Maria Novella museum approved

Work to expand the Santa Maria Novella Museum, the fourth most visited museum entity in Florence, thanks to its more than 40,000 visitors a year, after the Uffizi, Accademia and Palazzo Vecchio, has been approved.

This is one of the first in a series of investments contained in the Florence Pact that the administration is now officially kicking off. In total, the Pact activates interventions for 680 million for a series of interventions: from tramways to the enhancement of the Fortezza da Basso, from the removal of asbestos at the Leonardo da Vinci Technical Institute to bike paths.

Construction will start by the end of 2018 and end in 2019; the museum will remain open to visitors. The Santa Maria Novella museum, the municipality explains, is undergoing a profound transformation: after the farewell of the old Carabinieri barracks, which moved to the Scuola Marescialli di Castello last year, the complex has been expanded with new museum spaces that are already usable, the Chiostro Grande, the Northern Dormitory and the Chapel of the Pope.
The first batch of new works, costing 4.2 million euros, will cover an area of 540 square meters that will make up the entire new system of museum services, from the ticket office to the checkroom, from toilets to multimedia spaces.

“We inaugurate the ’Pact for Florence,’” Mayor Dario Nardella stressed,“ with a massive intervention in one of Florence’s most valuable and important artistic and architectural complexes. Culture is not an optional extra but permeates the entire work of our administration. At the end of our term we will have a more beautiful, larger and more attractive museum.”

The Santa Maria Novella complex consists of the basilica, owned by the Ministry of the Interior’s Religious Buildings Fund and managed by the Opera per Santa Maria Novella, and the museum, included in the Florentine Civic Museums.

Image: the basilica of Santa Maria Novella. Photo credit.

Florence: expansion of Santa Maria Novella museum approved

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