Founded in 1796 by Giacomo Carrara, Accademia Carrara is considered the museum of Italian collecting, because its collections are entirely based on bequests from enlightened patrons who wanted to increase the heritage by making it available to the city and the community.

The exhibition path is organized in sixteen rooms of different sizes, each telling different stories. The first sequence is dedicated to Italian art between the Gothic and the Renaissance on the Peninsula, with a focus on the significant nucleus of works from the Paduan and Venetian Quattrocento, featuring works by Pisanello, Mantegna, and Bellini, and on the contemporary Tuscan production, where the paintings of Raffaello and Botticelli stand out.

The second sequence, instead, outlines a path that illustrates the figurative tradition between Lombardy and the Venetian mainland domains, between the Fourteenth and Seventeenth centuries, with particular attention to the Bergamo context, where Lotto, Moroni, Baschenis, and Fra Galgario operated. Finally, the section dedicated to the Nineteenth century with a special focus on the events and protagonists of the Painting School of Accademia Carrara.