The Accademia Gallery

The Accademia Gallery informations
Address: Via Ricasoli, 60 - Phone: 0552388609
Entrance: € 8,50
Advance booking: Firenze Musei - Tel. 055294883 - School groups: Tel. 055290112
Opening times: Weekdays 8.15-18.50;
Holidays and Sundays 8.15-18.50 - Closed: Monday.

The most enlightened prince of the Lorraine family that ruled over Tuscany for over a century, the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, united in 1784 all the Florentine drawing schools into one Academy. He also founded a gallery to exhibit earlier paintings with the aim of facilitating the study of the Academy's pupils. The seat chosen is the present location of the Accademia Gallery museum, a building that originally housed the Hospital of St. Matthew, enlarged in time through the addition of several adjoining spaces.
The consistency and composition of the collections displayed in the Accademia Gallery museum has changed over time due to the addition of works of art removed from suppressed convents, but also due to loss of works temporarily given or returned to other Florentine museums, in particular to the Uffizi (Botticelli's Primavera was displayed here for many years). Over time the Gallery has become one of the main museums in town, also thanks to the acquisition of some extraordinary masterpieces, such as the Pietà by Giovanni da Milano (14th century); the Annunciation by Lorenzo Monaco (15th century); the splendid frontal called Cassone Adimari showing a sumptuous marriage procession (c. 1450) and the Madonna of the Sea attributed to Botticelli (1445-1510).
It is evident that the museum started to become the favourite gallery of tourists in 1873, when Michelangelo's David was exhibited for the first time on a specially arranged tribune. For protection purposes, the statue was in fact removed from Piazza Signoria where it had represented for over four centuries the strength and dignity of the Florentine Republic. In the early years of the 20th century, this statue was joined by other extraordinary works of art by the same artist, such as St. Matthew and the four Prisoners originally made for the tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome, but placed in the grotto of the Boboli gardens at the end of the 15th century, and finally by the Pieta di Palestrina (whose attribution to the master is still somehow controversial). A capillary organisation and restoration of some of the rooms on the upper floor have allowed the Accademia Gallery museum to recently integrate the collection with a series of paintings from the 14th to the 16th centuries and to open a room displaying the chalk models of famous 19th century sculptors like Lorenzo Bartolini and Luigi Pampaloni.

Accessible to disabled people.
Bookshops.
Guided tours can be reserved ahead by phoning the Monuments and Fine Arts Office, ph. 0552388658