Discover Gallerie dell'Accademia

A long white-fronted complex on the Dorsoduro bank of the Grand Canal, at the southern foot of the wooden Accademia bridge. It is three buildings joined into one: the hall of a Venetian confraternity, its church, and a convent — so the galleries run through rooms of very different height and shape, some with carved timber ceilings, rather than the even sequence of a purpose-built museum.

The museum is not a purpose-built gallery but three joined institutions: the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità, the church of Santa Maria della Carità, and the Lateran canons' monastery. Their seams are visible throughout, and much of the pleasure of the building is reading which part you are standing in.

The oldest surviving interior is the Scuola's 15th-century sala capitolare, whose carved and gilded wooden ceiling -- angels set into deep coffers -- is the room's original fitting rather than a museum installation, and now hangs above the gallery's earliest Gothic panels.

Andrea Palladio rebuilt the monastery from 1561 with a wholly different intent: a classical cloister, an oval staircase, and a tripartite atrium, all executed in bare brick and Istrian stone. Only part of the scheme was built before funds ran out, and a fire in 1630 destroyed more, so what survives is a fragment of a much larger classical plan pressed against Gothic neighbours.

The long modern expansion known as the Progetto Nuova Accademia, opened in stages after the academy vacated the site in 2004, converted the former academy rooms and Palladio's ground floor into new galleries, roughly doubling the display space.