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Building of the palace was commenced in 1560 by Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de' Medici as the offices for the Florentine magistrates - hence the name uffizi, meaning offices. Construction work ended in 1581. Over the years, parts of the palace evolved into a storage place of many works of art collected by the Medici family. After the decline of the Medici, the art treasures remained in Florence, forming one of the first modern museums.

Here is only a small selection from the world-class collection of paintings: (NB: All the links following the artists' names are to pages explaining the subject or form of the paintings, except for The Birth of Venus, which links to a page on the painting itself)

• Cimabue (Maestà)
• Duccio (Maestà)
• Giotto (The Ognissanti Madonna, Badia Polyptych)
• Simone Martini ( The Annunciation)
• Paolo UccelloNational Gallery, London Paolo di Dono better known as Paolo Uccello (b. 1475) was a painter (and also a creator of mosaics) in the employ and patronage of the powerful Florentine Renaissance family, the Medicis. Uccello is considered the father of the ar (The Battle of San Romano)
• Piero della FrancescaBaptism of Christ, 1442 Piero della Francesca (c. 1420 1492) was an Italian artist whose work was characterized by his interest in mathematics, particularly how it related to perspective and foreshortening. He wrote a treatise De prospectiva pingendi on h ( DiptychA diptych is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. These objects were quite popular in the ancient world, since they could record notes and measure time. Note This article discusses diptyches designed for the above mentioned purpose. For pa of Duke Federico da MontefeltroFederico da Montefeltro ( 1422 1482) was one of the most successful condottieri of the Italian Renaissance, a fighter for hire who created one of the great libraries, perhaps the largest of Italy after the Vatican, with his own team of scribes in his scri and Duchess Battista SforzaSforza was a ruling family of Renaissance Italy, based in Milan. The dynasty was founded by Muzio Attendolo, called Sforza ("Strong") (Cotignola, 1369 near Pescara, 1424) a condottiere from the Romagna serving the Angevin kings of Naples. He was the most of UrbinoUrbino is a city in the Marche in Italy, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site with a great cultural history during the Renaissance as the seat of Federico da Montefeltro. It has retained some of its picturesque medieval aspect on steep sloping groun)
• Fra Filippo Lippi (Madonna with Child and Two Angels)
• Sandro BotticelliAlessandro di Mariano Filipepi better known as Sandro Botticelli ( Florence March 1, 1445 May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance ( Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this moment, under the p (Primavera, The Birth of Venus, Adoration of the Magi and others)
• Hugo van der Goes (The Portinari Triptych)
• Leonardo da Vinci (Baptism of Christ, The Annunciation, Adoration of the Magi)
• Piero di Cosimo ( Perseus liberating Andromeda)
• Albrecht Dürer ( Adoration of the Magi)
• Michelangelo (The Doni Tondo)
• Raphael (Madonna of the Goldfinch, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi)
• Titian ( Flora, The Venus of Urbino)
• Parmigianino (The Madonna of the Long Neck)
• Caravaggio ( Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa)

In 1993, a car bomb destroyed and damaged parts of the palace; a number of pictures were destroyed, several more were damaged. A project is currently under way to expand the exposition space of the museum from some 6,000 square metres to almost 13,000 by 2006, allowing public viewing of many artworks long usually in storage.