Royal Scottish Academy Building, The Mound, Edinburgh 1

The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) Building, on the Mound, Edinburgh, Scotland is the home of contemporary Scottish art. It was built by William Henry Playfair in 1822-6. Along with the adjacent National Gallery of Scotland, their neo-classical design helped transform Edinburgh into a modern-day Athens of the North.

The ‘Scottish Academy’ was founded in 1826 by a group of eleven artists. It was created with the aim of creating an academy of fine arts instructing students at no charge, to present an annual exhibition open to all artists of merit and maintain a library devoted to the fine arts.