The Uffizi Gallery is one of the oldest museums in Italy and the world. In the birthplace of the Renaissance, in the heart of old Florence, the spacious palace houses the best works of such great artists as Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian. The pearl of the collection is the richest collection of the famous royal family of the Medici, which marked the beginning of the life of one of the largest and most significant museums of European fine art. In the middle of the 16th century, the glory of Florence as a city in which the High Renaissance flourished was becoming a legendary past. But, as you know, a holy place is never empty: the local artistic life has not gone away, it has only taken a different form. Art flowed into the museum. However, the then Florentine ruler had the idea to expand his residence. It turned out that he was fulfilling the will of fate, and it wanted one of the most famous museums in the world to appear in Florence. By the time in question, the Medici had established dominance over all of Tuscany. Cosimo I, a representative of the younger branch of the Medici family, decided to build a building where all government institutions would be concentrated. Hence the name - “Uffizi”, or, in modern parlance, “offices”. But Florence was lucky: the family of bankers and merchants that ruled it was distinguished by two features: from generation to generation, the Medici passed on their love of art and had long patronized artists. Sometimes they themselves became artists, in the broad sense. By the middle of the 16th century, the Medici had collected a good collection, which, among other things, included many works of art, and from the very beginning they decided to give part of the premises to the Uffizi for its storage.