Opera del Duomo Museum

The Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence preserves original masterpieces from the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Bell Tower, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, and Ghiberti.

Planning your visit

The Opera del Duomo Museum holds the originals. Everything you look at on the exterior of Florence's cathedral complex — the Baptistery doors, the sculpture from the facade and the bell tower — has been replaced outside by copies, with the real works brought indoors to protect them from pollution and weather. That makes this museum, not the buildings themselves, the place where you actually see Florentine sculpture.

Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, the gilded bronze Baptistery doors that took twenty-seven years, are displayed restored in a climate-controlled room. Michelangelo's Bandini Pietà, worked on in his seventies and partly destroyed by him in frustration, stands on the stairs. Donatello's gaunt wooden Mary Magdalene is here, along with his prophets from the campanile and the cantoria choir galleries. The reconstructed medieval cathedral facade, demolished in the sixteenth century, has been rebuilt at full scale with its original sculpture reinstalled.

The museum reopened in 2015 after a major expansion and is one of the best-designed in Italy — yet it remains the least visited part of the Duomo complex, which is a considerable advantage.

Bookable options include guided tours covering the Baptistery and the museum together, and combined tickets covering the dome climb, the Baptistery and the museum. The combined pass is generally the sensible purchase given the sites share ticketing. Current availability is listed below.