One of the great Italian art galleries
At the foot of the upper town of Bergamo, the Accademia Carrara is one of the most important art galleries in Italy, little known abroad but loved by connoisseurs. It was founded in 1796 by Count Giacomo Carrara, a passionate collector, who left his paintings to the city together with a school of painting, and it was enriched over the following two centuries by donations from other collectors.
The collection covers five centuries of Italian painting, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, with around 1,800 works. Among the masterpieces are works by Pisanello, Botticelli (including the portrait of Giuliano de' Medici), Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Raphael's St Sebastian, Lorenzo Lotto, Titian, Moroni, the great Bergamo portrait painter, Fra Galgario, Canaletto and Tiepolo, as well as Flemish and German painters. Reorganised and restored, the gallery is now very pleasant to visit, with well-lit rooms and clear explanations.
Tip: from the Accademia you can walk up to the Città Alta through the Porta Sant'Agostino; opposite is the GAMeC, the gallery of modern and contemporary art.
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