The Accademia

Venetian painting from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth, in a former church and monastery on the south bank, hung more or less chronologically so you can watch the thing develop room by room.

Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione’s Tempest, Titian, Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi — renamed under interrogation by the Inquisition, who objected to the dogs and dwarfs in a Last Supper.

What it costs

Ticketed. Worth checking whether a state-museum free day falls in your trip, and worth avoiding it if so, because the queue is then substantial.

The queue is worst at opening and around eleven. Booking a slot online costs a little more and is usually worth it in summer.

When to go

⚠️ It keeps short hours on Mondays — open only for the morning — which strands a lot of plans. Confirm the day you intend to go.

It is on the Dorsoduro side, so it pairs naturally with the Guggenheim and the Salute in one afternoon without crossing the Grand Canal twice.

Getting there

Vaporetto to Accademia, at the foot of the wooden bridge. Line 1 and line 2 both stop.

If you only have an hour

The Tempest, and Carpaccio’s St Ursula cycle. If you have longer, Room 1’s gold-ground panels are the reason the rest happened.

Allow two hours. It is bigger than it looks from the entrance, and the last rooms — the eighteenth century, Canaletto and Guardi and Longhi — are the ones people run out of attention for.

What people get wrong

Confusing it with the Accademia bridge, which is outside and free and one of the four crossings of the Grand Canal.

And treating it as optional because the pictures are “only” Venetian. Almost every painting in it was made for a building in this city, and a good many are still within a mile of where they were painted.