The gallery was born in 1784, when the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, founded by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1563, was reorganized by order of Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to form the present-day Accademia di Belle Arti. The new institution occupied the premises of the 14th-century hospital of San Matteo and the monastery of San Niccolò di Cafaggio. While the museum’s collections were expanded through the suppression of churches and monasteries under Pietro Leopoldo in 1786 and Napoleon in 1810, the crucial event in its history was the arrival of Michelangelo’s David from Piazza della Signoria in August 1873. In addition to the master’s sculptural works, the museum holds a number of major masterpieces of painting from the 13th to the 16th century as well as the Medici-Lorraine collection of musical instruments and a gallery of plaster casts.

When I admire an artwork, I always start wondering about the person who made it. It'd be great to chat with him like a friend, find out what makes him tick, his vices and shortcomings, and why he is an incredible genius capable of creating a masterpiece destined to live forever. The Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence is a precious trove of stories, each told by an invisible narrator who cannot wait to shoot the breeze with curious visitors, especially naive and rebellious kids who think museums are only good for ducking out of the rain. Walking through this temple, I pick up on tales of major artistic vocations, bitter duels, the desire of people in the shadow of some more famous relative to have their moment in the limelight, and marble VIPs that the kids in the back row don’t even begin to “get”.

Giotto di Bondone This fragment from the main chapel of the church of the Benedictine abbey in Florence was part of a series of frescoes of Scenes in the Life of the Virgin Mary. At a time when art was characterized by the lack of realism and largely immersed in an abstract context, Giotto broke new ground with the introduction of blue skies, chiaroscuro, real perspective and figures of solid physiognomy.

Michelangelo Buonarroti David is the work on which the immortal fame of its sculptor, Michelangelo Buonarroti, is based. In January 1504 it was placed at the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of Florentine strength and independence. The sculpture, 5.17 m tall and weighing 5,560 kilos, is distinguished not only by the figure's poise and elegance but also by the intense play of emotions captured in his expression in the moments before felling the giant Goliath with a stone from his sling.

Giovanni di Ser Giovanni, known as Scheggia This idealized view of Florence with a number of young people in period dress and the baptistery of San Giovanni visible on the left was initially interpreted as the decorated part of a marriage chest. Recent studies suggest instead that it could be a spalliera or panel painting serving to decorate a bed chamber. The scene depicted would therefore be a joyful dance.

Lorenzo Bartolini The gallery of plaster casts includes the collection of the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, the author of numerous monuments and portraits of eminent figures in the 19th century. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the marble sculpture of Emma and Julia Campbell, commissioned by their mother Lady Charlotte and produced in 1819-20, remained in the family collection in the castle of Inveraray, Scotland, until 2015.