The museum is situated in Via Ricasoli, no.60, just past the Academy of Fine Arts. Pietro Leopoldo, one of the most illuminated of the Lorraine Grand Dukes, commissioned this museum in 1784 by decreeing that all the schools of drawing in Florence were to be united into a single Academy (keeping to the same name and Statute conceived by Vasari in 1561) and that it was to contain a gallery of paintings by old masters to help the studies of the young artists. It is still here in the buildings that once belonged to the Hospital of San Matteo and to the nearby convent of San Niccoló. The Grand Duke also decided to include music (the Cherubini Conservatory of today) and restoration (the Opificio delle Pietre Dure) among the arts.

This was a real citadel of the arts which occupied, and still occupies, almost the entire block between Piazza San Marco, via Ricasoli, via degli Alfani, piazza Santissima Annunziata e via Battisti. The buildings assumed their present appearance in 1935, when the open loggia onto St. Mark's Square, was discovered (ascribed to either Brunelleschi or Michelozzo , but really a work by an anonymous architect of the end of the XIV century). Both the Academy Gallery and the future classrooms were designed and restructured in 1781 by Gaspare Maria Paoletti.

The first room contains the original plaster model by Giambologna for the marble sculptures of the Rape of the Sabines (Loggia dei Lanzi) and 16th century works from the Mannerist school.

These are followed by the Captives (originally for the tomb of Julius II) who act as a guard of honour to Michelangelo's David (1502-4), in the beautifully lit Tribune - designed specifically by architect De Fabris- situated at the far end of this spectacular gallery.Substituted by a copy in Piazza della Signoria in 1873, the sculpture represents a heroic and athletic figure, the symbol of the freedom of the Florentine Republic.