Above the shops on this side of the bridge there's a wall with a row of small windows that seems to belong to nothing around it. That's the top of a corridor running from the to , almost a kilometre long and completely sealed off from the street below.
had it built in 1565 for the wedding of his son to a , and , the architect, was given five months to do it. On the eastern stretch he ran into a tower house whose owners refused to sell, so he swung the corridor around it on brackets. That kink is still there, the one spot where you can see the family didn't get its way.
The higher the climbed, the less they set foot in the city itself, and this corridor is that idea turned to stone.
On the far side Via de' Guicciardini carries on, and before long a church with an open portico out front appears on your right.
Sources. Story: Gallerie degli Uffizi (Corridoio Vasariano, storia e percorso); Treccani (Giorgio Vasari) Photos: Corridoio Vasariano along the Arno, via Wikimedia Commons, photo Armin Kleiner, CC BY-SA 4.0
