Where did Michelangelo grow up and live?

📍Caprese Michelangelo, AR 52033, Tuscany, Italy

1475 – 1488

“I was born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni on the 6th of March 1475 in Caprese, a small Tuscan village near Arezzo. My mother died when I was six and I was raised by a stonecutter's family in Settignano, where the first thing I handled was the chisel and mallet. I grew up in Florence during its most extraordinary cultural moment — the Medici court, the Platonic Academy, the competition between painting and sculpture that I entered on the side of stone. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Pietà, the David, the Moses — these came from hands that first knew stone in a quarry village near Florence. I lived to eighty-eight and worked until weeks before my death.”

👍 LovedThe Florentine Renaissance culture that surrounded my formation. The stone of the Carrara quarries that I understood as living material. The physical act of releasing the figure from the marble.

👎 DislikedMy father's initial resistance to an artistic career. The physical demands of the Sistine Chapel ceiling — four years on scaffolding. The impossibility of satisfying my own standards.

Map showing where Michelangelo lived — Caprese Michelangelo, AR 52033, Tuscany, Italy

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Michelangelo's home at Caprese Michelangelo, AR 52033, Tuscany, Italy

📍 Street view today

Sources: Hibbard, H. Michelangelo (1974), Harper & Row; Condivi, A. Life of Michelangelo (1553, translated Alice Sedgwick Wohl)