Uffizi, nearly 2 million visitors in 2021. All the museum's numbers

Almost two million visitors for the Uffizi in 2021: there were, in detail, 1,721,637 visitors to the Florence museum last year. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the 4,391,895 in 2019, but these are not poor numbers if we consider the period and if we take into account that even in 2021, at the beginning of the year, there were rather prolonged periods of closure. Compared to 2020, the Uffizi then goes on to score 42.7 percent with increases affecting both the Gallery of Statues and Paintings in the Vasari building (969,695 visitors, +47.1 percent compared to 659,043 in 2020), the Boboli Gardens (512,633, +46.9 percent compared to 2020), and the Pitti Palace (239,309, +20.7 percent compared to 2020). The upward trend of young people visiting the museum is also confirmed to be stable: there were 326,185 under-25s in 2021, almost a hundred thousand more than the year before, when there were 229,250 (+42.3%).

At the Galleries, revenues also go up again, from 9,806,783 euros in 2020 to 14,742,830 million euros (+50.3%, they were instead 35,162,860 in 2019: the current numbers are comparable to those of 2014, when the Uffizi marked 16,082,365), with those from ticketing growing by +58.9%, from 7,427,105 euros to 11,802,916. After the first year marked by the pandemic, in which the museum was only able to generate 35.2% of its economic resources, in 2021 the percentage grew to 63.8%, thanks in part to work on new and different sources of income outside of ticketing (e.g., the sale of a digital silkscreen of the Tondo Doni certified with NFT technology), which contributed 13% to the 2021 budget.

The Uffizi today released all the numbers for 2021: 78 restorations of works, including that of Andrea del Castagno’s Portrait of Dante (by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure) and those of the Russian icons now on display in the Pitti Palace. 79 renovations and architectural designs, including 13 event and exhibition design projects (noteworthy are the opening of the new Sale del Cinquecento on the second floor of the Uffizi Gallery; the restoration, refurbishment and reopening of the Terrazzo delle Carte Geografiche also in the Gallery of Statues and Paintings after more than 20 years of closure; the Museum of Russian Icons on the ground floor of the Pitti Palace; the construction of 8 new bathrooms and the restoration and reopening to the public of 8 additional bathrooms in the museum itinerary; and the new lighting with 423 LED spotlights in the Gallery of Modern Art in the Pitti Palace).

As for exhibitions, 25 were organized in 2021: 10 at the Galleries, with a strong emphasis on contemporary art: from Giuseppe Penone ’s monographic exhibition to Lo sfregio, which compared the famous bust, made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, of Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli (the artist’s lover, whom he had her face disfigured out of jealousy) with Ilaria Sagaria’s photographs of women disfigured with acid. For the first time, Galleries’ exhibitions organized elsewhere outnumbered those offered in their own spaces. Notable among the 15 off-site exhibitions were major national and international initiatives (from Forli to Nîmes to Hong Kong), but above all 10 transfers that were part of the Uffizi Diffusi initiative, half of them within thewithin the “Terre degli Uffizi” project organized together with the Fondazione CR Firenze (Uffizi Diffusi in Assisi, Portoferraio, Prato, Monsummano Terme, Ravenna; Terre degli Uffizi in Anghiari, Castiglion Fiorentino, Montespertoli, Poppi, San Godenzo).

Again, on the donation front, the Galleries’ artistic heritage was enriched thanks to eight donations of works (of note, the self-portrait by London-based Endless (2021), the first street artist to enter the collection, and the three paintings donated by the Friends of the Uffizi Galleries: Fra Arsenio Mascagni’s Il Conte Ugolino (1611), Lionello Spada’s San Pietro liberato dal carcere (c. 1620), and Francesco Lojacono’s Campagna siciliana in un giorno di pioggia (c. 1886); 15 purchases (of note: Pellegrino Tibaldi’s San Paolo and Giovan Pietro Gnocchi, 1585).

As for digital communication, there are nearly one million Uffizi followers on all social platforms: to be exact, 962,987 (Instagram 681,556, 71 percent of the total; Facebook 126,674, 13 percent; Tik Tok 96,400, 10 percent; Twitter 58,357, 6 percent). Added to these are the 5,080 subscribers of the Uffizi Tv channel on Youtube. The Galleries’ Instagram profile ranks first among Italy’s most-followed museums and grows by 17.3 percent over 2020; Twitter users increase by 24.7 percent, Facebook users by 51.2 percent, about five points more than Tik Tok, which expands its audience by 45.9% and places the Uffizi not only at the top of the list of Italian museums but also in third place among the most followed art museums in the world, after the Prado in Madrid and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. On the museum’s website, www.uffizi.it, 13,319,127 views were recorded in 2021, from a total of 2,400,361 users. 7 were the new virtual exhibitions published during the year, 1,113,552 views gathered from them.

48 was the number of lectures organized as part of the Wednesday Art and Culture Dialogues; 19 were the publications of volumes (3,875 total pages, of which 1.066 in English), 3 the conferences (one on the theme of exile organized on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance, one on the theme of the Art Bonus, co-organized with the Regional Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture, yet another dedicated to the theme The copy factory between the 18th and 19th centuries in collaboration with the universities of Florence, Pisa and Salerno). The Uffizi also distinguished itself on the educational activities and accessibility front: there were 34 in-person visits to the museum, including 12 for school groups and 22 for families with children; 989 online lessons, with 10,648 students involved, divided into 484 classes; 42 online meetings for children and families, 564 children involved. There were 110 internships held in collaboration with universities and other institutions. 2021 was also the year of the launch of the new project with the Uffizi brand designed to gather initiatives dedicated to younger visitors, Uffizi Kids. As for the sphere of events dedicated to accessibility and cultural mediation, there were 53, including visits and online lectures, with 992 total participants; the Galleries’ first tactile book, dedicated to Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera, was also presented; in the video section of the Uffizi Galleries website, 20 new clips were added to the series of videos about the museum made in sign language; and, in collaboration with RAI, 92 audio descriptions of the virtual exhibition Dante Istoriato with Federico Zuccari’s drawings for the Divine Comedy were produced.

“These encouraging numbers, which are exceptional compared to the overall situation,” comments Uffizi Director Eike Schmidt, “are due to the relentless work done even during the darkest period of closures: restorations, both architectural and of the works, have never stopped, new installations have continued, and the Galleries’ staff has been working hard in every way to reach the public virtually and bring the museum into their homes. Together we have been able to reach out to regular visitors and entice new categories to discover the value of the museum and art.”

Uffizi, nearly 2 million visitors in 2021. All the museum's numbers

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