Tips for visiting the Accademia Gallery in Florence
You cannot visit Florence without visiting the Accademia Gallery Museum! This is where the most famous sculpture in the world, Michelangelo’s David, is housed, along with many other sculptures and paintings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Since everyone wants to see David, the museum is (almost) always crowded and with long queues. For this reason, I wrote this post with all my tips for visiting the Accademia Gallery museum in Florence, so that you can plan your visit in advance, and enjoy the experience to the fullest.
My name is Claudia, I am a local licensed tour guide in Florence with more than 10 years of experience. Learn more about me and my guided tours in Florence.
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Tips for visiting the Accademia Gallery museum in Florence
The Accademia Gallery Museum is the second most visited museum in Italy. The first place belongs to the Uffizi Gallery, which however is much larger and can accommodate many more people at the same time.
The Accademia Gallery, on the other hand, is much smaller and has a smaller capacity, which is why the queue outside can be long. In this post you will find my tips for booking skip-the-line tickets and for choosing the best day and time to visit the museum.
Book tickets in advance
At the Accademia gallery museum there are two queues: one for those who have booked and one for those who still have to buy a ticket. The really long and slow queue is only for those who have not booked. The queue of booked instead flows very quickly.
This is why it is crucial to book tickets in advance: you can choose the day of the visit and a specific time slot. This way you will ensure that you enter within a few minutes from the time marked on your ticket. This is the only way to get skip-the-line tickets!
I recommend you to book tickets on the official website of the Accademia Gallery of Florence. Every other website is a reseller and raises the price by a few euros.
Resellers are still helpful in case tickets are sold out on the official website. In this case check:
After booking: on the day of your visit, arrive about 15 minutes beforehand, to have time to collect your tickets. You can pick them up at the external ticket office, it is located right in front of the museum entrance, in via Ricasoli 105 R (the R letter means red numbers), next to the Eroica café. To collect your tickets, just show the booking code you received by email when you booked.
Price of tickets for the Accademia Gallery in Florence
Tickets cost:
- Regular tickets: 12 euros
- Reduced ticket: 2 euro (for EU citizens between 18 and 25 years old)
- Free ticket: for children under 18 years old and people with disabilities.
If you book the ticket online you will have to add 4 euros per person for the booking fee.
Check opening days and hours
You don’t want to plan your visit when the museum is closed!
The Accademia Gallery museum is closed on Mondays (like every Italian national museum, including the Uffizi Gallery), and on January 1st and December 25th.
Opening hours: from 8.15 am to 6.50 pm. Last entrance is 6.20pm.
Best day to visit the Accademia Gallery in Florence
As I said, the museum is almost always packed, and it’s hard to find a really quiet day. The number one tip is visiting the Accademia Gallery and Florence in low season, from November to March, excluding the Christmas period. But I understand that it is not always possible to choose the period in which to travel.
Considering that the museum is closed on Mondays, Sundays and Tuesdays are the busiest days of the week. Of course it is very busy even on weekends.
The best days to visit the Accademia Gallery are Wednesdays, Thursdasy and Fridays.
Best time to visit the Accademia Gallery in Florence
The museum opens very early, at 8.15 in the morning, and this is definitely the best time to visit the Accademia Gallery. The time before closing is also a good time, after 5 pm. but don’t go too late, or you won’t have enough time to see all the artwork.
Large groups and most people start arriving around 9am.
Free admission on the first Sunday of the month
On every first Sunday of the month Italian national museums (included the Accademia Gallery) are free! This is a good opportunity for those who want to save as much as possible, but this is the only pro.
On the other hand, as you can imagine, everyone wants to visit the museum for free that day, and the queues are longer than ever, never lasting less than two or three hours. The museum is so overcrowded that it is hard to see the artwork behind so many people.
On Sundays with free admission it’s not possible to book tickets online, the first come first serve rule applies.
For this reason, all tour companies and most of freelance tour guides do not give guided tours of the Accademia Gallery on the first Sunday of the month.
Take a guided tour of the Accademia Gallery
If you want to discover other masterpieces of art displayed in the museum, and you want to know all the secrets of David and Michelangelo’s sculpture, take a guided tour!
It’s the best way to:
- Learn a lot about Michelangelo, his David and the other works of art housed here.
- Get help booking tickets and planning your visit
- Optimize your time and see as much as possible in the time available to you
- Be able to ask all the questions you want to an expert
I am a local licensed tour guide in Florence. Learn more about my Accademia Gallery private tour!
If, on the other hand, you want to share the tour with other people, take a look at this guided small group tour of the Accademia Gallery (tickets are included). But keep in mind that compared to a private tour, the small group tour is only convenient if you book for 2 people or less. From 3 people up, the private tour is cheaper.
How long does it takes to visit the Accademia Gallery in Florence?
The Accademia Gallery museum is much smaller than the Uffizi, and takes much less time to visit. But even if small, it’s full of interesting works of art, and if you want you can spend many hours there! How long it takes to visit the museum depends only on you, how many works of art you want to see and how much time you want to dedicate to each of them. To simplify:
- If you only want to see David by Michelangelo, 20-30 minutes inside the museum is enough.
- If you also want to see other works of art, I suggest you spend at least an hour there.
- If you are particularly fond of Italian painting and sculpture, then you can easily spend even half a day there.
Not just Michelangelo’s David. There is much more to see!
Even though many people come here just to see David by Michelangelo and leave a few minutes later, there is so much more at the Accademia Gallery of Florence! The museum is crammed with medieval and Renaissance paintings, sculptures, and other works of art. In particular, I recommend you not to miss:
The Prisoners by Michelangelo – four stunning unfinished statues by the same artist who sculpted the David.
St. Matthew by Michelangelo – yep, a sixth sculpture by Michelangelo!
Sala del Colosso (Hall of the Colossus). The first large room of the museum, with deep blue walls, houses Renaissance paintings and the large plaster model of the Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna (the original marble sculpture is located in Piazza della Signoria). Among the paintings I have a thing for those of Filippino Lippi and those of Pietro Vannucci known as Perugino.
In the Hall of the Colossus there are also two artworks by Botticelli (I wrote about them in my blogpost about all Botticelli’s paintings in Florence).
Cassone Adimari – a bedhead richly painted in 1450 with a wedding scene taking place in Piazza Duomo. The wedding picture of a rich couple of Florentine aristocrats.
The Bartolini plaster cast gallery. A collection of 19th-century plaster models from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, donated by the famous sculptor and professor Lorenzo Bartolini.
The Museum of Musical Instruments – a small but fascinating museum within a museum! There are many musical instruments from the 1600s and 1800s, including the oldest upright piano in the world.
What not to bring at the Accademia Gallery
Here is the list of objects that it is forbidden to bring into the museum:
- Any bottle other than half a liter water bottles.
- Scissors, blades and any other sharp object that could damage artworks on display.
- Selfie sticks, tripods and photo easels.
- Long umbrellas, large backpacks, suitcases, helmets and any other large object.
The museum doesn’t have a cloakroom, so large items are not allowed. If you have a long umbrella, you can leave it at the ticket counter.
Extra tips for visiting the Accademia Gallery in Florence
Toilets are located downstairs, at the end of the visit path. The stairs to access it are found in the last room, the same one where there are the exit doors of the museum.
The entrance ticket can only be used once: if you leave the museum, you can never re-enter (unless you buy another ticket).
Multilingual audio guides are available at the bookshop at the museum entrance (price is 6 euros).
The Accademia Gallery bookshops (there are 2 of them) are nice but nothing impressive. I suggest you shop at the Uffizi Gallery bookshop, which is huge, full of books of all kinds on art, history, children’s books, gadgets and much more.
That’s all for this time! I hope this post will help you to plan your visit and have a nice experience. If you have any questions, or have other tips for visiting the Accademia Gallery in Florence to add to mine, leave me a comment and share your experience with other travellers.
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