Highlights of this tour
- The artist’s tomb at Santa Croce
- His family home, Casa Buonarroti
- Piazza della Signoria
- A walk into San Lorenzo area
- Palazzo Medici Riccardi (exterior)
- The Accademia Gallery (with David and more)
On the Tracks of Michelangelo tour will start with the artist’s funerary monument at Santa Croce Church, and will continue with the Buonarroti home nearby.
We will finish with the Academy Gallery at the foot of David.
Along the itinerary we shall stop and see other sites (like San Lorenzo and Palazzo Medici) that will help us reconstructing the great genius life in Florence.
He lived a long life, almost 89 years, and his 75 year long career is extremely well documented. We shall start our tour paying tribute to the great genius by visiting his tomb, designed by Vasari in Santa Croce.
You’ll learn about the translation of his body from Rome (and the legend behind it) and about his great funeral in the Medici family Church of San Lorenzo.
Not far from Santa Croce is Casa Buonarroti, a museum house enshrining two masterpieces of his very early years, when, under the protection of the Medici, he could study ancient sculpture at the famous Academy established by Lorenzo the Magnificent by his St Mark Garden.
A number of selected students could access the exceptional sculpture garden, but unfortunately it doesn’t exist anymore.
Your guide will tell about Michelangelo’s apprenticeship at the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio and his relation with Lorenzo the Magnificent, with Giulio de’ Medici (the future Pope Leo X) and their entourage of artists and intellectuals.
The two marble reliefs, the ‘Virgin of the Stair’ and ‘The Battle of the Centaurs’ testify the exceptional skills of Michelangelo in his teens!
The museum house also contains a rich collection of drawings and documents. Of great interest the wooden model for the facade of San Lorenzo ( that was never built) and the model for the chariot on which the statue of David was carried from Piazza della Signoria to the Academy in 1873.
On the Tracks of Michelangeloes moves on passing by Piazza della Signoria and Piazza del Duomo