How tall is Michelangelo's statue of David?
Michelangelo's David measures 5.17 metres (17 feet) tall, a figure that refers to the marble itself, without the pedestal. Michelangelo Buonarroti carved the statue between 1501 and 1504 from a single block of Carrara marble, and the original lives inside the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze in Florence.
The figure rises to roughly three times the height of an average adult and weighs approximately 8.5 tons. It was the first colossal marble statue of the High Renaissance, and the first since classical antiquity.
How tall is the statue of David with the pedestal?
With its marble pedestal included, the David reaches approximately 7 metres (around 23 feet) in total height. The statue itself is 5.17 metres, and the marble pedestal under the David adds roughly one and a half to two metres on top of that, depending on the source.
The David sat on a pedestal in Piazza della Signoria for more than three centuries before Florentine authorities moved the original indoors in 1873 to shield it from the weather. The architect Emilio De Fabris designed a new vaulted setting in 1882, the Tribuna del David, inside the Galleria dell'Accademia. Sources rarely publish a precise figure for the marble base, so the combined height stays approximate.
