Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

Six thousand square meters of surface area, organized into 28 rooms, and spread over three floors: a spectacular setting that enhances one-of-a-kind masterpieces from around the world. For the first time, it is exhibited in a manner that is adequate and faithful to the sense for which they were created.

THINGS TO DO AT MUSEO DELL OPERA:

• A museum inside of a museum, housing a collection of religious art and artifacts that is unparalleled anywhere else in the world:

Most of the original sculptures and works commissioned for the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and Giotto's Campanile can be displayed at the Museo dell opera del Duomo.

These were copied and then stored in the Cathedral Museum so the originals could be preserved there.

In addition, the museum houses several replicas of the Cathedral's facade and dome and some of the original tools used in its construction.

Several talented artists, including Donatello and Brunelleschi, worked in this palace when the remaining buildings in the Piazza del Duomo were being constructed. The David sculpture, Michelangelo's most well-known work, was carved by the artist in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

Collections

• Take time to admire and study the following:

Michelangelo's 'The Deposition': This is a marble sculpture he sculpted, intending to have it placed on his tomb in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Later, he decided he wanted his final resting place in Florence, so he sold the sculpture before it was finished.

Donatello's Penitent Magdalene: Carried out during the last stage of his life, Donatello shocked the population by depicting Magdalene as old and gaunt. He did this during the last stage of his life.

Given that it was sculpted more than 500 years ago, its modernism may surprise us today even though its realism shocked people at the time it was created.

The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti was commissioned to decorate the north doors of the Baptistery with his work titled 'Gates of Paradise.'

It was a project that took him 27 years to finish.

Michelangelo, unable to believe what he was seeing, gave the structure the name 'Gates of Paradise.'