The Vasari Corridor, the famed covered and elevated passage designed by Giorgio Vasari and linking Palazzo Vecchio to Palazzo Pitti in Florence via the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio, has been newly 'populated' with several notable Roman busts of emperors and intellectuals from the world-famous Florentine art gallery.
    The busts of the likes of Cicero, Augustus, Commodus, Hadrian's consort Sabina and Antonius Pius's wife Faustina have been placed in the part of the walkway running over the Ponte Vecchio.
    The one-kilometre-long enclosed corridor was built in 1565 to a design by Renaissance artist and pioneering art historian Vasari after Florence's then Medici rulers decided they wanted to move freely and secretly between the seat of city government in Palazzo Vecchio and their private palace in Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the Arno.
    After long restoration, the corridor reopened to the public on the anniversary of the Via dei Georgofili Sicilian Mafia bombing in May 2024.
    The corridor running above the iconic Ponte Vecchio that spans the Arno River was closed to the public in 2016 for safety reasons.
    It underwent refurbishment involving installation of a new lighting system and air conditioning and to make it fully accessible to all visitors.
    Five people were killed in the Cosa Nostra mafia bombing near the Uffizi Galleries on the night of May 26-27, 1993.
    Another five were killed in a Milan modern art gallery bombing on the same night, while religious and cultural sites in Rome suffered heavy damage.

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