The Gallery is particularly famous for its sculptures by Michelangelo: the Prisoners, the St.Matthew and, especially, the statue of David which was transferred here, to the specially designed tribune, from Piazza della Signoria in 1873.
In the adjacent rooms, which were part of two former convents, important works of art were collected here in the 19th century from the Academy of Design, the Academy of Fine Arts and from suppressed convents.
The holdings comprise mostly religious paintings by major artists working in and around Florence between the mid-13th and the late 16th
centuries. The collection is especially important for its gold-ground paintings. In the first floor rooms is a sequence of splendid late-gothic polyptychs, complete in all their parts.
There is also a collection of sculptures in plaster by the 19th-century sculptors Lorenzo Bartolini and Luigi Pampaloni, besides a section of Russian icons.
Recently the Gallery has been further enriched by the important collection of old musical instruments from the Cherubini Conservatory, the Department of Musical Instruments.
