The Gallery occupies the entire first and second floor of the large building built between 1560 and 1580 on a project by Giorgio Vasari: it is one of the most famous museums in the world for its extraordinary collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the age modern). The collections of paintings of the fourteenth and the Renaissance contain some absolute masterpieces of art of all time: just mention the names of Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello , Michelangelo, Caravaggio, as well as masterpieces of European painting, especially German, Dutch and Flemish. No less important in the panorama of Italian art is the collection of statues and busts of the Medici family in antiquity. The collection embellishes the corridors of the Gallery and includes ancient Roman sculptures, copies from Greek originals that have been lost.

The building, commissioned by Cosimo I de 'Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was designed to house the "Uffizi", or the administrative and judicial offices of Florence. Cosimo entrusted the enterprise to his trusted artist, Giorgio Vasari, who designed a building with a Doric column portico, with an elegant and severe look, founded "on the river and almost in the air".
The construction starting from 1560 of the Magistrates' building, the original name of the complex, involved demolitions and the rehabilitation of the district of Baldracca, a district in which the homonymous, infamous tavern stood.
Vasari brilliantly solved the problems imposed by limited space by adopting solutions of great scenographic impact.