About Us - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti

QS World University Rankings® by Subject Art & Design: NABA is the Best Italian Academy of Fine Arts, in the Top 100 worldwide

Founded in 1980, NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, with campus in Milan and in Rome, is the largest art academy in Italy. Since 1981 NABA is legally recognised by the Higher Education in Art and Music system (AFAM, Alta Formazione Artistica e Musicale), regulated by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR).

From the 2026/27 Academic Year, NABA will establish its first international campus in London, alongside those in Milan and Rome – a key milestone in the Academy’s international development strategy.

NABA Values

NABA was founded with the aim of challenging the inflexibility of the traditional academic world, introducing new visions and experiments. It is an academy that is evolving by looking to the future to perceive the signs of change, welcoming the diversities of the contemporary world.

NABA is not just a place of education guiding students to create their professional identity and personal expression. It is also a place of production, enabling students to experiment a plurality of experiences, thus acquiring independence in design, empowering them to consciously position themselves within the design scene and the international professional system.

Complex projects, in diversified languages based on cultural areas of reference, generate new and innovative content, thanks to artistic production and application to the production sectors of companies.

The teaching methodology is interdisciplinary, the result of a true vocation for research and relations with the artistic and professional context. A collaborative network of institutions and partners facilitating sharing, growth and enriching knowledge beyond the perimeters of the Academy in the fields of fashion, design, visual arts, media and new technologies, graphics and communication.

Learning by thinking

Our programmes constitute a continuous sequence of multidisciplinary experiences generating research and projects in the artistic and professional contexts of current trends.

Learning by doing

Ideas become projects, strategies, techniques and technologies, turning into prototypes and in some cases developing into products for the companies we work with.

Teaching by learning

Learning by doing is also teaching by learning and this has changed the relationship between teachers and students: classes and groups have transformed into work teams that liaise continuously with companies and research institutes.

Experience forms the methodological skeleton through which innovation insinuates itself and guides us in planning the future together.

Italo Rota, NABA Scientific Advisor from 2013 to 2024

We are NABA