The removal of the statue of David from Piazza della Signoria to the Accademia di Belle Arti took place between July 31 and August 4 in 1873, using a wagon designed by the engineers Porra and Poggi. Casa Buonarroti possesses an accurate and original model of its vehicle. The statue was placed in the wagon in an upright position, with the lower part enclosed by a wooden crate fixed to the base, the knee and the upper part of the legs. The system of suspension used to avoid shocks contained strong steel springs. The wagon moved on tracks and had a special rotating bed to allow it to negotiate street corners. The equipment was made in the workshops of the Roman Railroads. The move took five days as the heat meant that it was only possible to work from four to eleven in the morning. It was the last act in an operation prompted by well-founded worries about the conservation of the work: perhaps the first case of the removal of a work of art from an outdoor location for reasons of this kind. (It is worth recalling that the "imperfection of the marble" had been noticed right from the outset, in December 1504, that is at the time when the decision had to be taken over the location of the recently finished statue. In fact the possibility of placing it under the shelter of the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria was considered. But the David was set up in front of Palazzo Vecchio, where it suffered damage on several occasions, struck by lightning and made the target of street violence, sometimes with political motivations). The task of finding a suitable location for the colossal masterpiece where it would be protected form the weather was made more difficult by the fact that the work had always been seen as a paragon of beauty and sublime symbol of the city. As early as 1846, Marchese Nerli, head of the corps of civil engineers in Tuscany, had proposed moving the work and replacing it with a "cast in bronze, to be commissioned from the royal founder Clemente Papi". The plan, considered too expensive at the time, was taken up again five years later by Nerli's successor, Alessandro Manetti, who detected in the statue "noticeable signs of degradation such as to arouse serious concern over its safety, especially if any earthquake shock should occur, even a slight one". The old proposal of the Loggia dei Lanzi was revived, but rejected on the grounds of the statue's size. Once again the project seems to have come to a standstill and for over ten years the David remained where it was, with a roof to protect it from the vagaries of the weather. In the meantime Clemente Papi had made the bronze cast, and this was to be erected on a monumental base in the middle of Piazzale Michelangelo in 1875. Finally, a commission was set up in 1866 and proposed a variety of homes for the work, including the "grand salon" of the recently constituted Museo del Bargello and two different locations inside the complex of San Lorenzo. Eventually, the choice fell on the large spaces inside the Accademia di Belle Arti where in 1875, the David was to form the centerpiece of the most important exhibition staged to celebrate Michelangelo's centenary. It found its definitive home in 1882, in the tribuna that Emilio De Fabris had built for the purpose in the meantime.

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