Casa Buonarroti Museum

Address: Via Ghibellina 70, Florence, Tuscany

Website: https://www.casabuonarroti.it/

Hours: Tue-Sun 9:00am-7:00pm, closed Mondays

Casa Buonarroti is a house-museum in Florence dedicated to Michelangelo Buonarroti and his family estate. It preserves early works by Michelangelo together with drawings, documents and period rooms.

As the Buonarroti family retained possessions and works after Michelangelo’s death, the house became an institutional collection to preserve his artistic legacy; the present museum grew from family holdings and 19th-century efforts to present the artist’s early pieces and archive to the public.

Set in central Florence, the museum is on a short walk from the city’s main historic core and is integrated into Florence’s dense network of art-historical sites.

• Family collection: Founded and preserved by the Buonarroti family, the house-museum focuses on Michelangelo’s early output and the family archive rather than large-scale later masterpieces.

What to See#

• Early Michelangelo works: The principal rooms hold Michelangelo’s early sculptural works, notably his reliefs “Madonna of the Stairs” (c. 1491) and “Battle of the Centaurs” (c. 1492), displayed alongside drawings and family documents.

Casa Buonarroti is in central Florence, about a 10-15 minute walk from the Duomo and within easy walking distance from many city center hotels. From Santa Maria Novella train station it is roughly a 20-25 minute walk or a short bus ride on local lines.

• Ask to see the Madonna of the Stairs and the Battle of the Centaurs-these early Michelangelo works are the reason the house was preserved.
• Visit during off-peak hours to avoid crowds in the compact rooms where the sculptures are displayed.
• Read the short museum biography panels before entering the rooms-the chronology helps clarify why a family palace became a shrine to a young Michelangelo's fame.