Why are many museums in Florence still open on a hiccup basis and with reduced hours?

The health emergency in Tuscany is really no longer what it was during the winter and spring months, and although industrial and commercial activities have all resumed full swing, a great many museums are still open on a hiccup basis, with greatly reduced hours, and closed for most of the week. Very few museums have restored their canonical opening hours. This is especially the case in the autonomous state museums: the Uffizi, as of July 7, has returned to its classic hours of 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (every day except Mondays), and the same goes for the Accademia Gallery, which after a run-in period with early closure has returned to the usual 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. hours, and the Boboli Gardens, which closes at 6:15 p.m. There is no change in the situation at Orsanmichele, which already in the pre-Covid period was open only on Mondays and Saturdays, and has restored its normal opening days, albeit establishing a regime of accompanied visits three times a day. Case in point is that of the Medici Chapels Museum, which usually opens from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon in the summer, but for this year has decided to apply its winter hours to the warm season as well, with about five hours of opening, alternating morning openings (on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays) with afternoon openings (on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays).

Among the state museums, however, there are still those who open on a narrow gauge, such as the Pitti Palace, for example, which opens on a morning schedule (8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with last admission at 12:30 p.m., when last summer it was open until 6:50 p.m.), or such as Palazzo Davanzati, which keeps closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and on other days operates for a time regime (2-6:30 p.m.) reduced by a couple of hours compared to normal. The Bargello Museum, on the other hand, which is closed until August 4 for refitting, does not count.

Of the Tuscany Museums Directorate’s state museums, the Museo di San Marco, the Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia and some less-visited venues have opened at full capacity: however, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale opens at reduced ranks, welcoming visitors on Thursdays from 2 to 7 p.m., Fridays Saturdays and Sundays from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed on other days. The Cenacolo di Fuligno and the Cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto remain closed.

If the autonomous state museums are holding, outside these institutions the situation is really complicated, especially in the civic museums. The most striking case is that of Palazzo Vecchio: it is open only on Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. (the same hours as the Museo del Novecento), as opposed to the normal ten-hour basic opening hours (every day), with even evening extensions until 11 p.m. in summer. Forte Belvedere is open every day except Mondays as usual, but the morning opening has been dropped: from the 11-20 hours to the new 15-20 hours, a reduction of four hours. Again, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, two-hour reduction: from the normal 9-7 p.m. regime to 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., with an extra day of closure per week (Tuesday, which is in addition to Wednesday, the museum’s traditional closing day). The Santa Maria Novella complex remains open only on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., closed all other days. Normally the complex, in the summer months, is accessible every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. (except Fridays, when it opened at 11 a.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, when there was an early closing at 5:30 p.m.). Still closed is the Brancacci Chapel.

Those who want to visit the main ecclesiastical museums will also find major difficulties. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo opens Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10:15 am to 4:15 pm. Closed all other days. Same opening days (with slightly different hours, but still around six hours open) for all other monuments run by the Opera, except for Brunelleschi’s Dome and the Terraces of the Cathedral, which also open on Fridays. As for the Santa Croce complex, on the other hand, a set route is followed here with very strict hours: open during the week only on Wednesdays and Fridays from 4 to 5:30 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays and holidays from 1 to 5 p.m. During the week the tour lasts an hour and a half, on weekends 50 minutes (in the weekend short tour the Sacristy where Cimabue’s Crucifix is admired, the interior of the Pazzi Chapel, the Bardi Chapel in Vernio with Donatello ’s Christ, and the Bardi Chapel in Mangona are not accessible). It’s better, however, at Villa Bardini, the main museum of the Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron, which is open every day (except the first and last Monday of the month) from morning to evening.

The feeling is that many museums, especially those most frequented by tourists, are having difficulty reopening precisely because of the lack of the normal flow of visitors, fueled by the crowds that come to Florence on vacation every year from all over the world: outside of the large state museums, only the smaller museums have in fact reopened at full capacity. And one wonders, therefore, how long this situation should last, why the opening of museums that are indispensable for learning about Florence’s history, art and culture should not be given continuity, and whether we should rethink the city’s cultural and economic development models.

Why are many museums in Florence still open on a hiccup basis and with reduced hours?

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