Gallerie dell'Accademia

If you want to understand why Venetian painting changed the world, this is where you come. The Accademia holds the greatest collection of Venetian art on the planet — over 800 paintings spanning from the Byzantine period through the 18th century, all housed in a complex of buildings that includes a former church, a monastery, and a confraternity hall.

Napoleon created the gallery in 1807 by raiding churches and monasteries across Venice for their best art — a common Napoleon move. The suppressions of religious orders meant that masterpieces that had hung in the same spot for centuries were suddenly homeless, and the Accademia became their refuge. It's one of the few positive legacies of French occupation.

The star of the collection might be Giorgione's "The Tempest" — a painting so mysterious that art historians have been arguing about its meaning for five hundred years. A soldier, a nursing woman, a storm, a ruined city: nobody knows what it's about, and that's the point. Giorgione invented the concept of painting a mood rather than a story, and this tiny canvas changed everything that came after it.

The Accademia also holds Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man," the famous drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and square, but it's almost never on public display. The work is drawn on paper and is so fragile and light-sensitive that it only comes out for special exhibitions. You've seen it a million times on T-shirts and textbooks, but the chances of seeing the original are remarkably slim.