About the Museum
The Accademia is particularly renowned for its sculptures by Michelangelo: the Prisoners, the St. Matthew and, especially, the statue of David, which was transferred here in 1873 from Piazza della Signoria to the custom-designed tribune. In the adjacent rooms, which were part of two former convents, important artworks were collected in the 19th century from the Academy of Design, the Academy of Fine Arts and various convents. Its holdings comprise mostly religious paintings by major artists who worked in and around Florence between the mid-13th and late-16th centuries. The collection's gold-ground paintings are particularly significant; and the first-floor rooms feature a sequence of splendid late-Gothic polyptychs, complete in all their parts.
