Piazzale Michelangelo

This guide to Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence starts in 1873, with nine pairs of oxen dragging a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David up the hillside south of the Arno. It follows the architect behind the project, Giuseppe Poggi, handed the whole southern hillside to remake after Florence became capital of a newly unified Italy, and his ambitious plan for the terrace: a neoclassical shrine meant to house a museum of Michelangelo's greatest works, guarded by David and four figures copied from the Medici tombs. Notice which way the bronze David is actually facing as you listen.