I have been living in Florence for one month and have not been to a single museum until today. In honor of spending all that time here, I visited the infamous David of Michelangelo at the Accademia Gallery. It's located only ten minutes from my apartment and I have passed the gallery multiple times unknowingly. I even had class on the same block as the gallery once a week for the last four weeks. There are 72 museums, galleries, and exhibits around the city and I finally checked one off the list.
I didn't book tickets in advance and for some reason thought I could simply walk in but that was not the case. They have multiple lines for different ticket types. One line is for people who have no ticket, Another line is for people who pre-purchased tickets and were given a specific time to enter the gallery. After I saw the line for no tickets and how it wrapped around the block, purchasing a ticket at the ticket booth for a specific time was the best option. The next available time slot was twenty minutes from the time I purchased the ticket.
At 3:45 I was on my way into the gallery, keeping my eye out for the David (it's very hard to miss). Upon entering the gallery, paintings and another famous sculpture called "Rape of the Sabines" caught my eye but I was on the hunt to see David. The gallery is not very big and has a lot of dead ends. It took less than an hour to walk the whole museum (and that included staring at David for 20 minutes). The rooms contain a lot of sculptures of heads and paintings as well as a room with instruments from before the 1700s.
The David is located in the main room and has a huge skylight above where he stands. When the sunlight shines through, the David looks like it's glowing. I was walking up to it and it kept getting bigger and bigger. The statue stands at a tall 17 feet (including the base) and the only word I can think of to describe it is mesmerizing. I was in awe the entire time I was in the same room as the David and could not keep my eyes off of the statue. The attention to detail is insane when you look at it and think about how Michelangelo carved it from a solid block of marble. The hands have veins in them, the eyebrows were etched in one hair by one and it is unreal to think about that.
The David has significance to the Florentine people. Davids eyes are supposed to cast a threatening glare in the direction of Rome to warn anyone who was trying to threaten the city of Florence. He is supposed to represent independence and strength among the people. There is so much history and culture based around this one statue. The Accademia Gallery is a must visit if you are planning a trip to Florence.
BS