Accademia Gallery - Michelangelo's David

The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, Italy, was founded in 1784 as a teaching gallery for students of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts and is now internationally known as the permanent home of Michelangelo's David. The statue, carved from a single block of Carrara marble between 1501 and 1504, stands 5.17 metres tall beneath a purpose-built neo-classical skylit rotunda added to the building in the nineteenth century specifically to house it. The David was moved here from Piazza della Signoria in 1873 for conservation reasons; the version in the piazza is a replica. Approaching the David through the long Tribune corridor builds anticipation: the corridor displays Michelangelo's four unfinished Prisoner statues and the Saint Matthew, all left rough-hewn, which frame the finished perfection of the David at the far end with powerful effect. Viewing the statue requires circling it slowly — the figure turns subtly on its axis, and the musculature, veins, and furrowed expression read differently from each angle. Art historians identify this as the moment of focused tension before the confrontation with Goliath, not after. Beyond the David, the museum contains Florentine panel paintings from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, a collection of musical instruments, and plaster casts by nineteenth-century sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini. The entire collection can be seen in ninety minutes; most visitors spend between one and two hours. Queues without advance booking can exceed ninety minutes on busy days. Photography of the David is permitted without flash and the statue can be photographed from all angles around the rotunda.