Buy Skip-the-Line Tickets Online to Visit the Uffizi Art Gallery in Florence

Skip-the-line time-slot reservation tickets are almost essential to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Buy priority access tickets online and book well in advance, especially during summer and other holiday periods.

Botticelli Birth of Venus in the Uffizi with crowds and phone cameras

Buying fast-track tickets online in advance is almost essential to visit the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence. The Uffizi art museum is justifiably one of the most popular in the world but in the high season getting in can be a struggle requiring visitors without time-slot reservations to wait for hours in slow-moving queues. Buy Uffizi tickets online with time-slot reservations and skip-the-line priority access. Guided tours are also a good option to enter the Uffizi without delays while combination tickets with the Accademia (David) may offer slight discounts.

→ Top museums, churches, and sights in Florence are open mostly as normal in 2024 — see 2024: Florence Opening Hours of Top Sights, Museums, and Churches for the latest information and opening hours. The Firenzecard is again sold while the Turbopass Florence City Pass is a good alternative that includes online timeslot reservations for both the Uffizi and Accademia.

The cheapest tickets for the Uffizi Gallery are sold onsite at the art museum in Florence. However, queues to buy tickets followed by queues to enter the museum are long and slow-moving — during the high season, it can take several hours to actually enter the museum with no guarantees that tickets will be available for the specific day.

Despite the surcharge, it is highly advisable to make time-slot reservations and to buy tickets online in advance.

Standard admission to the Uffizi is €25 (€12 in some winter months) but special exhibitions may increase the price. Time-slot reservations add €4 per person and online purchases often add a further couple of euros. However, skipping the queues and being sure of seeing the art on a specific day make these surcharges well worth the expense.

All children under 18 may enter the Uffizi for free but must wait in the standard queue, or buy time-slot reservations at the going reservation rate (free if parents have a Firenze card). EU citizens 18 to 25 pay the reduced fee of €2 (plus time-slot reservation is sensible).

Uffizi Gallery tickets are also available from the Pitti Palace, Orsanmichele Museum, and the National Archaeological Museum — queues here may be shorter than at the Uffizi’s own ticket window.

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Botticelli Birth of Venus in the Uffizi
An 8:15 time-slot ticket for the Uffizi in Florence is a great thing to have.

Skip-the-line reserved time tickets for the Uffizi are sold online through various vendors — if time slots are sold out at a specific site, tickets may still be available at others making it worth checking if a specific time is optimal but hard to get. B-ticket is the official ticketing website but many further authorized ticket sellers are available including GetYourGuide and Tiqets. These authorized sites are often easier to use, do not change to Italian during the transaction, and may have better cancelation policies. Discounts are sometimes available if buying tickets for further Florence sights in a single transaction.

In contrast to B-ticket, some of these resellers will sell leftover tickets for use on the same day if available — an option worth considering for the afternoon when the ticket queue in the morning seems to stretch forever. Similarly, tours are often still available on days when basic admission tickets are sold out.

All online ticket reservations for the Uffizi must be exchanged for paper tickets before going to the main entrance to the museum. The pick-up point is usually at entrance 3 but some resellers offer different pick-up points that may be more convenient. 

Although the queues for picking up time slot tickets are generally short, it is a good idea to send the rest of a party to the security line while picking up tickets for a group.

If booking an audioguide note that it is picked up inside the museum as a separate transaction — keep the printout from picking up Uffizi museum entry tickets for this purpose (or even better, print two copies) or ensure that the phone confirmation is available offline (as phone reception is iffy at best in this part of the museum).

All visitors must go through the security checkpoint and when the museum is full, new visitors must wait until others exit. In such cases, visitors in the timed-reservations line may also have to wait but always receive fast-track priority on admission to visitors in the standard queue.

Guided tours of the Uffizi Gallery are good options to save time and gain priority access without having to secure and pick up tickets in person at the museum. Tours are a particularly good option for visitors with limited time or a tight schedule — standard tours are generally 90 minutes to two hours.

Tours may even be available on the day of booking making it a worthwhile option on crowded days when timed tickets are no longer available. After a tour, members may stay inside the gallery until closing time so ensure the Uffizi is the last sight seen when visiting multiple sites on a combination tour.

Selecting a guided tour for the Uffizi Gallery may at first glance be daunting — GetYourGuide alone lists well over a hundred options for the high season. All tour guides in Italy are licensed and many will be art students, so the quality of knowledge is rarely an issue.

Some options to consider: small group tours are more pleasant than big groups. Families and small groups may often get better value from private tours while some may prefer a family-friendly tour. It is worth comparing offers as prices vary widely.

Early morning tours are a great option but only if the tour starts really early, as in shortly after 8:00 rather than at 10:00 when the Uffizi is getting busy — try to avoid tours starting between 10:00 and 14:30. Late afternoon tours are the best option for a less crowded museum but no time may be available to see more of the gallery after the tour.

More value may also be had from combination tours with other sites. The most popular tour combination is with the Accademia to see Michaelangelo’s original David. A variety of tours are available — many give separate tours of the two sights with visitors making their own way to the next gallery. These are often more cost-effective and give free time between the two sights but are not the best option for visitors with limited time who would do better with a guided walk.

Other combinations include the Uffizi and Pitti Palace (and Boboli Gardens) and climbing the cupola of the Duomo.

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Several combination tickets are available for the Uffizi Gallery and offer good savings if the included sights are of interest:

The Passepartout 5 Days (also Intero Cumulative 5 giorni ) combination ticket gives one-time access to the Uffizi Gallery (€25), Pitti Palace (€16), Boboli Gardens (€6/10), National Archaeological Museum, and the Museum of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure within five days. As the Boboli Garden is open on Monday, Monday counts as a day even though the museums are closed. With this combination ticket, the Uffizi Gallery must be seen first — the reservation fee is automatically included but accompanying children require a separate €4 online reservation too.

The Passepartout combination ticket is around €38 in summer and offers around a €10 saving over paying for each sight separately. It is available from b-ticket or Tiqets.

The Firenzecard is a good deal for seeing many cultural sights in Florence. It includes admission to all major museums, galleries, and churches (but not Duomo sights). It is valid for 72 hours but can be “restarted” anytime within 12 months for another 48 hours. Public transportation is a cheap optional extra. The Turbopass Florence City Pass is a good alternative that includes online timeslot reservations for both the Uffizi and Accademia.

Reservations (free, also for own children entering for free) for the Uffizi (and Accademia) must still be made but entry is guaranteed within the 72-hour validity period (but of course not necessarily at the desirable early morning or late afternoon slots). The free reservations may be made via phone or in person at various museums in Florence but not online. It is possible to make the reservations even before buying the Firenzecard.

Phone cameras in front of the Primavera [or ‘Spring’] by Sandro Botticelli
Spring © Gli Uffizi

The best time to visit the Uffizi Gallery is late afternoon but don’t leave it too late — once the closing of rooms starts the guards have little sympathy for visitors still admiring the art. Visitors generally spend two to four hours in the Uffizi.

It is also pleasant to visit the art museum directly at opening time if entering within the first two time slots. The museum is usually busier mid-morning than mid-afternoon but in general, 10:00 to 15:00 are best avoided.

A very good option is also to visit the Uffizi Gallery in the evening during the high season when it stays open until 22:00 on some days. Reservations for these evening hours are generally easier to obtain too.

The worst day to visit the Uffizi is any day with free admission — queuing is the only option on free days with no time-slot reservations possible for anyone. Currently, admission to the Uffizi art museum is free on the first Sunday of every month, national museum week (usually early March), and around ten further days per year, usually on historical days associated with Florentine and Medici history.

Tuesdays tend to be busy as the Uffizi is closed on Mondays and weekends are generally busy throughout the year. Wednesday and Thursday are usually quieter days.

Why Queues Are Long at the Uffizi

Only a limited number of visitors are allowed inside the Uffizi at any given time. Although the art collection is one of the finest in the world, the museum building was never intended for very high visitor numbers so when full, further visitors have to wait until people leave the building. Visitors without reservations wait the longest and often experience waves of visitors with time-slot reservations entering without the regular line moving on.

The worst time for visitors without time-slot reservations is in the morning, except right at opening hour. As the museum fills up, no further visitors are allowed in until some start leaving. The first visitors are likely to start leaving by ten, which is the time when tour groups start to turn up and enter, through a separate entrance, to keep the museum full and the no-reservations line static.

After lunch and especially later in the afternoon are generally better options when attempting to enter the Uffizi Gallery without reservations. The same late afternoon times work also for most other popular sights in Florence such as the Accademia and sights linked to the Duomo

All visitors must go through the security checkpoints and on busy days even timed tickets and guided tours may experience delays to enter the museum.

As with a growing number of top sights in Italy and the rest of Europe, buying time-slot reservation tickets online in advance is the only sensible way to visit the Uffizi and Accademia in Florence.

The high season in Florence is increasingly long: Easter, May, July, August, and the Christmas holidays are especially busy. November and January to mid-March are the only quiet months. Plan and book time-slot reservation tickets and tours when available in advance — the Accademia and the Uffizi are again sold out weeks in advance. Top sights are quieter directly at opening time or in the late afternoon.

→ →  Special opening hours for top sights in 2024 — most sights are open normal hours in 2024 but advance time-slot reservations when available are always sensible even for sights where bookings are optional.

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Henk Bekker in armor

About the author:

Henk Bekker

Henk Bekker is a freelance travel writer with over 20 years of experience writing online. He is particularly interested in history, art, and culture. He has lived most of his adult life in Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark. In addition to European-Traveler.com, he also owns a travel website on the Lake Geneva region of Switzerland and maintains statistical websites on car sales and classic car auction prices. Henk holds an MBA from Edinburgh Business School and an MSc in Development Finance from the University of London.