Uffizi Gallery reopens

(ANSA) - FLORENCE, JAN 21 - Florence's iconic Uffizi Gallery reopened on Thursday after a 77-day COVID-linked closure.
    "If you want to play truant," Director Eike Schmidt appealed to students using a Florentine dialect phrase, "fare forca", "then come and do it here".
    Visitors to the Uffizi, as well as enjoying its matchless Florentine Renaissance collection, will be able to see a masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby, loaned by the National Gallery in London, 'An Experiment On A Bird Inserted Into a Pneumatic Pump'.
    They may also take in the archaeological show 'Empresses, Matrons, Freed Slaves, The Faces And Secrets Of Roman Women'.
    A tourist guide and a Florentine woman were the first back into the celebrated museum.
    "It's moving for me to be back in here, it's like coming home," said the guide.
    The visitor, a 55-year-old woman, said "I came back to see my favourite works, which I hadn't seen for so long".
    Schmidt said "welcome back to the Uffizi after 77 days, the longest closure since the Second World War.
    "The crisis is not yet behind us but we have this as a signal, the importance of culture and direct access to culture".
    Democratic Party Senate Whip Andrea Marcucci said the reopening of the storied Florentine gallery "is one of the few pieces of news that warm your heart in this period and is also a beautiful sign of hope. We'll succeed in getting through this nightmare".
    (ANSA).