Galleria dell'Accademia

The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze is a state museum on Via Ricasoli, ten minutes' walk north of the Duomo, and it exists in its present form because of one statue. The institution dates from 1784, when Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo reorganised the Academy of Arts of Design, founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, into the modern Academy of Fine Arts, housing it in the fourteenth-century Hospital of San Matteo and the convent of San Niccolo di Cafaggio. Its holdings grew through the suppression of churches and convents ordered by Pietro Leopoldo in 1786 and by Napoleon in 1810. The decisive moment came in August 1873, when Michelangelo's David was moved indoors from Piazza della Signoria.

The route is short and deliberately staged. The Sala del Colosso opens it with Giambologna's full-scale unfired clay model for the Rape of the Sabine Women, made in 1582 for the marble now in the Loggia dei Lanzi, a rare survival of a sixteenth-century working model at one-to-one scale. From there the Galleria dei Prigioni runs the length of the hall with Michelangelo's unfinished figures for the tomb of Julius II, along with his St Matthew and the Palestrina Pieta, and ends at the apse of the Tribune where the David stands. The plaster collection, the Gipsoteca, fills the Salone dell'Ottocento with models by Lorenzo Bartolini and his pupil Luigi Pampaloni, and it is the part most visitors walk past.

Allow ninety minutes. The museum publishes no suggested visit length, so that figure is this guide's judgement rather than a number read off the operator's site, and it is built around the shape of the building. The collection occupies one ground floor and a first floor, and the walk from the entrance to the David is a few minutes; a visitor who came only for the statue can be back on Via Ricasoli in forty. Ninety minutes buys the Prisoners looked at properly on the way in rather than passed, the Gipsoteca, the fifteenth and sixteenth-century painting rooms, and the musical instruments with time at a listening station.

Tuesday–Sunday 08:15–18:50; closed Monday. Last admission is 18:10. The museum is also closed on 1 January and 25 December. Access to the Musical Instruments rooms and first-floor galleries ends at 18:40. The museum is closed every Monday, and on 1 January and 25 December. One Monday is announced as an exception for 2026: 6 April, with regular hours and standard admission fees.

Standard adult admission is €20. A timed reservation is strongly recommended and costs an additional €4; B-Ticket is the museum’s only authorized online ticket channel. Full admission is 20 euros. Citizens of the European Union aged 18 to 25, up to the day of their twenty-fifth birthday, pay 2 euros on production of a passport or identity card, and the same reduction extends to citizens of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Uruguay. Under-18s enter free, collecting the ticket at the desk with a document; children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.

The museum entrance is at Via Ricasoli 58/60. For city buses, use La Pira San Marco for lines 1, 11, 17, 20, 52 and C1, or Santissima Annunziata for lines 6, 14, 23, 31 and 32; both stops are about 130 metres from Piazza San Marco, at the northern end of Via Ricasoli. The address is Via Ricasoli 58/60, 50122 Florence. Entry and the ticket office are at number 60, which is also the accessible entrance, and the street runs straight from the north side of the Duomo to Piazza San Marco, so almost every visitor arrives on foot from the cathedral in under ten minutes. Santa Maria Novella station is roughly a fifteen-minute walk west.

The accessible entrance and ticket office are at Via Ricasoli 60. All exhibition rooms are wheelchair accessible; the first floor is reached by lift, with stairlifts serving subsequent rooms. Mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs are admitted, although standard wheelchairs are required for the first-floor stairlifts. Standard wheelchairs can be borrowed free of charge without advance booking, subject to availability. An accessible toilet is on the ground floor near the lift; its key is available from bookshop staff. Tactile orientation maps are provided in the Sala del Colosso and the first-floor Sala 1. Everyone passes a security inspection, and metal objects that could be dangerous are taken at the metal detector. The museum has no cloakroom.

Photography for personal use is permitted. The institute's visitor regulation allows visitors to take photographs where photography is signed as allowed and staff instructions are followed, and it forbids the use of flash and of tripods or other professional equipment; using a flash or a stand is listed separately among prohibited behaviours. Selfie sticks, walking poles and non-folding umbrellas cannot be carried in and must be left in the spaces provided at the entrance, and drones are banned outright. Drawing in pencil or on a tablet is expressly allowed, which is unusual and worth knowing if that is why you came. In practice the light decides the pictures.