Michelangelo’s statue of David is 5.17 meters tall. That height refers to the marble figure itself, not the pedestal on which it stands.
Michelangelo carved David from Carrara marble between 1501 and 1504 in Florence. The statue was originally commissioned for a series of prophets intended for the roofline of Florence Cathedral, where its great size would have helped it appear visible from the ground. Once completed, however, officials decided that placing such a massive sculpture so high was impractical.
Instead, David was installed in Florence’s civic center, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, and unveiled in 1504. Its enormous scale helped transform a biblical hero into a symbol of Florentine independence and vigilance. Michelangelo shows David before the fight with Goliath, concentrating on tension, alertness, and idealized anatomy.
A common mix-up is confusing the statue’s height with its weight or with the height of its display base. David weighs several tonnes, but the canonical measurement for the sculpture is 5.17 meters, or about 17 feet.