Making Room for Art; An Uffizi expansion aims to show more works to more people. But Florentines are fighting to preserve their city.(Uffizi Gallery)

Byline: Barbie Nadeau

By 7 a.m. on a winter's day in the heart of medieval Florence, the queue for the Uffizi Gallery's ticket booth already winds around the block. Bundled against frigid winds off the nearby Arno River, thousands of tourists wait outside for two hours or more for a glimpse of the world's best collection of Renaissance art. In the summer, the weather is better and the lines even longer; the wait just to get to the entrance can easily exceed four hours. For a hefty premium, tourists can skirt the queue with a reservation. But they still can't beat the press of the crowds inside--melding into what can only be compared to Dante's "Inferno"--as nearly 5,000 people a day jostle through the ancient galleries for a glimpse of masterpieces by Cimabue, Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Giotto and Raphael. "Right now the experience could be a lot better than it is," admits Marco Fossi of the superintendent's office of the Uffizi. "The overall crush does not enhance the value of seeing the art."

Improving that experience is precisely the goal of the deafening jackhammers, towering cranes and grinding cement trucks now transforming the palazzo built in 1560 by the Medici duke Cosimo I. They are part of a massive [euro]50 million, five-year expansion and renovation aimed at giving the Uffizi display spaces worthy of its collection. Though the top floor has been a gallery for the private Medici collections since 1581, the horseshoe-shaped building was never intended to accommodate millions of visitors each year. The expansion will double the museum's exhibit areasto nearly 13,000 square meters, making room for more than 800 masterworks--including Manfredi's "Carita Romana" and Guido Reni's "David With the Head of Goliath"--now collecting dust in a storage warehouse nearby. It will also nearly double the daily capacity for visitors to more than 8,000. "The expansion is not just about making it bigger in size or outdoing the Louvre or Prado," says Fossi. "It's about making it a better experience."

But Florentines are far less concerned with the satisfaction of museumgoers than with the preservation of their city. Protesters have been demonstrating against the presence of a 50-meter yellow crane in the courtyard, blaming the construction for ruining everything from the air quality to the cobblestone streets. The Benetton clothing group, which is co-sponsoring the project along with the Italian government, had to replace many of the advertisement-clad barriers it installed to shield the unsightly construction after protesters vandalized them.

Already local opposition has prompted extensive changes to the project. The original plans, drawn up in the late 1990s, called for Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to build an ultramodern seven-story loggia at the entrance. But after Florentines complained that the addition would block the view to the Arno from the Piazza Della Signoria, Isozaki's ...