The cross-sectional behaviour of laminated glass (LG) is characterised by a significant zigzag effect owing to the large stiffness mismatch between the glass and polymer layers. The approach incorporated in current glass design standards is based on the use of a monolithic model with an effective thickness, which suffers several sources of inaccuracy and limitations.In this paper, laminated shell elements with an alternating stiff/soft lay-up are enhanced and used to model LG structures, so as to accurately reproduce the through-thickness behaviour of LG with a minimal number of zigzag displacement parameters per node. In order to consider the influence of loading rate and temperature on the response of LG, a linear viscoelastic material model is adopted to simulate the polymer interlayer, which is formulated based on a recursive formula for stress calculation. Finally, several applications of the proposed modelling approach for two-ply and multi-ply LG structures are presented, considering typical deflection, stability and creep problems, where the benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated through comparisons against monolithic shell models based on an effective thickness as well as 3D continuum models.