Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Academy

 The Academy was a public gymnasium in northwest Athens. Plato taught there, and the Academy remained the centre of Platonic philosophizing until the first century BC. Hence the term 'Academy' came to be used to designate Plato's school; members of the school were called 'Academics'. (And hence, ultimately, the modern use of the words to describe intellectual institutions and their members.) The word 'Academy' originally had a topographical reference. A mile and a half northwest of the Athenian agora, along the Ceramicus road, there was a public gymnasium and wrestling square set in a spacious park. Like most gymnasia, the Academy contained an exedra - a sort of open-air lecture theatre.