Michelangelo’s David too big for Florence

January 18, 2008

According to Paolo Cocchi, Tuscany’s culture councilor, Michelangelo’s David should stand in a dismissed railway station on the edge of the city ring road.
The place, known as Stazione Leopolda, is set to become a new concert hall.
“Florence has already reached the point at which tourism becomes unsustainable," Cocchi wrote in a letter to the minister of Culture and the Mayor of Florence. "To enlarge the area visited by tourists and reduce congestion in the centre would bring benefits for everyone."
Every year, around 1.3 million tickets are sold for the Galleria dell’Accademia, where David has been the star attraction for 135 years.
Moving the towering sculpture would be "extremely risky," according to Franca Falletti, the director of the Accademia Gallery. "There are cultural and conservation reasons that render this idea baseless and inopportune. The proposal is one that absolutely cannot be shared. For historical and scientific reasons we can affirm that David's home is in the centre of Florence."
Living in Florence, I can say that Michelangelo’s David is regularly tortured by extravagant ideas, and Cocchi's proposal doesn’t come as a surprise.
Bella Firenze is going to change -- and not for the best, I’m afraid.
Local authorities have planned to run a new tramline that would slice through Piazza del Duomo, the cathedral square, and run by side of the Accademia.
In the next future, 32 metre-long super-trams will run through monuments, Renaissance palaces and museums housing fragile art works.
No wonder they want to move David from the Accademia. Tremors from the tram -- not the impact of mass tourism-- would be a constant threat to the world's most beautiful statue.