Museum sold to the city in 1661 and public since 1671 (now Kunstmuseum Basel). The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford opened on 24 May 1683 as the world's first university art museum. Its first building was built in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities Elias Ashmole gave Oxford University in 1677. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence was initially conceived as offices for the Florentine civil service (hence the name), but evolved into a display place for many of the paintings and sculpture collected by the Medici family or commissioned by them. After the house of Medici was extinguished, the art treasures
New exit for the Uffizi Gallery structure and that of the Loggia del Grano (its historic complement that dominates the corner across the street)and "become an instrument for the museum to communicate with the city". The project for the new exit of the museum continues to be a sensitive subject for Florentines. The project has been at a stand-still since 2003 when it was originally intended to be unveiled. The debate over the loggia became both a political argument as well as an aesthetic one. Ruins below the Uffizi were discovered not long after excavations began which made the project even harder to realize due to