Galleria dell'Accademia opening hours

The Galleria dell'Accademia keeps one of the simplest schedules in Florence: identical from Tuesday to Sunday, all year round, with no seasonal variations. The only things to memorise are three times: doors open at 8:15 am, last entry at 6:20 pm, closing at 6:50 pm.

The three end-of-day times are not interchangeable, and mixing them up costs you the visit. At 6:20 pm the last visitor goes through: after that, no one gets in, not even with a paid ticket. At 6:40 pm staff begin closing procedures and start walking the public towards the exit, room by room. At 6:50 pm the museum is closed.

In practice, whoever enters at last entry has about a full half hour. That's enough to reach the Tribuna, see the David and walk the Hall of the Prisoners — the core almost everyone comes for — but not the painting collection or the Gipsoteca. For a complete visit, treat 5:00 pm as the last reasonable entry time; to visit without watching the clock, go in by 4:30 pm.

If your time in Florence is counted in minutes, the statue still deserves even a lightning visit: what to look at in half an hour is covered in our guide to Michelangelo's David.

The Gallery closes every Monday, on 1 January and on 25 December. In 2026 there's one exception worth putting in your calendar: the special opening on Monday 6 April, Easter Monday.

The Monday closure has a practical knock-on effect for the whole week: Tuesday absorbs the visitors shut out the day before and often runs busier than average by midday — one more reason to aim for the 8:15 am opening.

Entry is free every first Sunday of the month and, in 2026, also on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. Be warned, though: on free days reservations are switched off, entry is first come, first served, and the queue on Via Ricasoli is measured in hours. If the budget allows, any ordinary Sunday with a booked ticket makes for a better visit than a free Sunday spent in line — the costs of the alternatives are on our ticket prices page.

The Accademia is small — its blessing and its limit. The same rooms you can walk in two hours fill up fast, and the difference between a memorable visit and one spent staring at the backs of heads comes down almost entirely to your entry time. This is the typical shape of a day: not a guarantee, but a reliable pattern to plan around.

The two golden windows, in short: the 8:15 am opening, when the Tribuna stays sparse for a good half hour, and the late afternoon after 4:30 pm, when the groups have already moved on and anyone entering still has almost two full hours. Everything in between — from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm — is when queues and packed rooms are the rule.

At the same time of day, the day of the week still shifts things considerably. The best combination is quickly said: Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday at the 8:15 am slot — mid-week weekdays, first entry of the day, the museum at its emptiest.

• Avoid: the first Sunday of the month. It's free, which makes it the single most crowded day of all, with no way to reserve.
• Weekends and long holiday weekends: Saturday and Sunday are the busy days by definition; if they're your only option, the 8:15 am or late-afternoon rule counts double.
• Rainy days: when the weather turns, Florence pours into its museums and queues grow even in low season. If the forecast looks bad, book further ahead than usual.
• Tuesday at midday: pays the price of the Monday closure, as noted above. Perfect at 8:15 am, less so at 11:00 am.

The last variable is the season. From April to October a reservation is effectively essential: without one, the wait to buy at the ticket office easily tops 1–2 hours. From November to March, on weekdays, walking in early in the morning is realistic — but even in winter a timed ticket remains the simplest way to remove the unknown. The options with priority entrance are on our priority entrance page.

Allow 1 to 2 hours. The core route — Sala del Colosso, Hall of the Prisoners, Tribuna with the David — takes three quarters of an hour. The second hour is shared between the gold-ground painting collection, the Gipsoteca Bartolini and the small musical instruments museum with the Stradivari cello from the Medici collection.

The museum's compactness makes it easy to slot into a day: an 8:15 am entry has you free before 10:30 am, with the Duomo a five-minute walk away and Piazza San Marco one minute away. If you arrive by train you can do everything on foot: it's 10–12 minutes from Santa Maria Novella station — route and directions are on our location and how-to-get-there page.

One logistical detail that eats into your time: the museum has no cloakroom and there's a metal detector check at the entrance. Large backpacks, helmets and luggage aren't allowed in, and leaving them at the nearby storage (paid, unofficial) stretches your schedule. Travel light: the security queue moves faster and your booked time stays a real time.