"The Galleria degli Uffizi is the world's oldest museum. The building itself is a masterpiece, originally designed by Giorgio Vasari, architect, painter, and telltale author of the lives of the Renaissance artists. Its aristocratic walls house two unparalleled collections: The Galleria displays masterpieces of painting dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as great works of sculpture from classical antiquity. The second collection, known as the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, holds nearly 120,000 drawings and prints; begun as a collection in the mid-sixteenth century, it is still expanding today." "The Uffizi Gallery Museum tells the story of these incredible collections, begun in the mid-1500s by history's greatest art patrons and singular family, the Medici. With more than 300 outstanding full-color illustrations and a remarkably insightful text, the brilliance of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy - a magnet city for the greatest painters, sculptors, artisans, and writers of that era - comes to life, and with it the story of t!his incomparable building, its history, and its collections."--BOOK JACKET.