Italy's celebration of Michelangelo will be centred in the artist's native Tuscany.

Italy is marking the 550th anniversary of the High Renaissance genius Michelangelo with a series of special events and cultural initiatives, centred mainly in Florence.

The celebrations begin on Thursday, 550 years after the birth of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in the village of Caprese Michelangelo, located about 100 km east of the Tuscan capital.

Florence will host "the most important museum on Michelangelo in the world" thanks to collaboration between the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Bargello Museums, the director general for Italy's state museums Massimo Osanna said on Monday.

Osanna told news agency ANSA that the two museums will create joint itineraries enabling visitors to tour the Accademia and the Bargello as well as visiting Michelangelo's sketch-filled "Secret Room" which was discovered beneath the Medici Chapels complex 50 years ago.

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Osanna was peaking on the sidelines of the presentation of "The eternal contemporary. Michelangelo 1475-2025", a programme featuring talks, readings and concerts in honour of the artist who painted the Vatican's Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512.

The Galleria dell'Accademia's star attraction is Michelangelo's David, a towering marble masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, sculpted by the artist from 1501 to 1504.

The museum is also home to several other Michelangelo sculptures including four unfinished "slaves", originally created for the tomb of Julius II in Rome, and the incomplete St Matthew, as part of an intended series of 12 apostles for the Duomo in Florence.

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The Bargello hosts four works by Michelangelo: Bacchus, a relief representing a Madonna with Child, Brutus, and David-Apollo.

There will also be celebrations in Caprese Michelangelo, at the Birthplace Museum of Michelangelo Buonarroti, where the Renaissance master was born on 6 March 1475.

Italy will mark the occasion by issuing a special commemorative stamp and a collector's coin in tribute to the artist who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.