The Galleria dell'Accademia, also known as the Museo dell'Accademia, is one of the largest museums in Venice, located on the banks of the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro district and housing within its bowels a huge collection of Venetian paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries. In fact, there are several galleries at once. They were founded in 1750 on the initiative of the Senate of Venice as a school of painting, sculpture and architecture. The intention of the Senate was to make Venice the centre of art education in Italy along with Rome, Florence and Milan. It was also one of the first institutions in Italy to study the process of restoration at the end of the 18th century. The school was originally called the Academy of Fine Arts, but in 1807 it became known as the Royal Academy and by Napoleon's order took over the building where it is today.
The school's name was later changed to the Academy of Fine Arts.
A little later, towards the middle of the 19th century, the galleries were turned into a museum and the creation of museum collections began. Today one can see works by the greatest Venetian masters of the past - Paolo and Lorenzo Veneziano, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Lorenzo Lotto, Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian, Tiepolo, Canaletto and many others.
One of Venice's four bridges spanning the Grand Canal, the Accademia Bridge, was named after the Galleria dell'Accademia. It connects the Galleria building, a former convent and school building of the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carita, and the urban neighbourhood of San Marco. The idea to build this bridge first appeared in 1488, but it was not built until 1854. The author of the bridge project was Alfred Neville, who created it in the form of an original steel structure. At the beginning of the 20th century the bridge was replaced by a wooden one, because, as contemporaries thought, it did not fit into the urban landscape, and in 1985 a new bridge was built in its place, preserving the appearance of the original structure.
