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Tear your eyes away from the famed Birth of Venus and Primavera (see The Uffizi, Florence) to peruse other Botticelli masterpieces such as Pallas and the Centaur and an Adoration of the Magi featuring a self-portrait (in yellow robes on the right). Compare that Adoration with those by Botticelli’s student, Filippino Lippi, and by Botticelli’s contemporary (and Michelangelo’s teacher), Ghirlandaio.

The earthiness of Masaccio and the delicacy of Fra Angelico join the likes of Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello in Room 7. Renaissance ideals develop further with anatomically exacting works by the Pollaiuolo brothers and the flowing lines of Masaccio’s more elegant student Filippo Lippi (whose Madonna and Child with Angels is). These lead up to the languid grace of Lippi’s protégé, Botticelli.

The first Uffizi room bridges the medieval and proto-Renaissance with a trio of Maestàs , from Cimabue’s Byzantine take, through Duccio’s Sienese Gothic style, to Giotto’s version (see Maestà). Simone Martini’s Annunciation represents the graceful 14th-century Sienese school. Gentile da Fabriano and Lorenzo Monaco give one final, colourful shout of the medieval in the International Gothic style of the early 1400s.

Room 15 celebrates Verrocchio’s star pupils, including Lorenzo di Credi, Botticini, Umbrian master Perugino (Raphael’s teacher), and Leonardo da Vinci himself. As an apprentice, Leonardo painted the angel on the left of Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ . Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation (see The Annunciation), his unfinished, chaotic Adoration of the Magi , and Signorelli’s Crucifixion round out the room.

After some Peruginos, Signorellis and a Northern interlude, Room 25 brings out the Renaissance big guns: Michelangelo and Raphael. Andrea del Sarto and his students developed Michelangelo’s colours and asymmetrical positioning into Mannerism. Meanwhile, the High Renaissance Venetians Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto explored new realms of colour, light and composition.

The works are fine but not outstanding. Northern Italian masters Bellini, Giorgione, Mantegna and Correggio are interspersed with their German and Flemish contemporaries Cranach, Holbein and Dürer. Portrait of the Artist’s Father is Dürer’s first work, painted at the age of 19. These rooms mostly provide a needed mental break before the High Renaissance collections.

The Uffizi’s post-Renaissance collections are not outstanding, save for a few by Caravaggio – Bacchus (see Bacchus), a Sacrifice of Isaac and Medusa – self-portraits by Rembrandt and Rubens, and Artemisia Gentileschi’s gory Judith and Holofernes .

The Uffizi’s original display space is a chamber with mother-of-pearl tiled-dome and inlaid pietre dure (stone) floor and table. It was built by Francesco I to show off the Medici Venus and other Classical statues. Portraits by Bronzino and Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino’s lute-plucking Musician Angel , and Raphael’s St John in the Desert cover the walls.

The main corridor linking the galleries is lined with Classical statues – mostly Roman copies of Greek originals. Its ceiling vaults are frescoed (1581) with intricate grotesques celebrating Florence’s history, thinkers, leaders and artists. Views from the short south corridor are justly celebrated.

The kilometre- (half-mile-) long corridor between the Pitti Palace and Uffizi was damaged during a 1993 terrorist bombing. It is lined with works from the 17th to 20th centuries, including self-portraits, and open for booked guided tours for a limited period of the year.