The Merchant of lost souls
Venice is not just a city. It behaves more like a sensation, like something between a reality and a dream. “It’s a place where the real and the imagined overlap,” Santa GAÏA tells me, as if the lagoon itself edits reality by softening its lines, smudging its edges.
During her summer stay in Venice, Santa GAÏA continued developing The Dance of Seven Veils, her new series of textile murals inspired by the city’s atmosphere and layered history. Venice became a space for research and reflection—its light, textures, and shifting perspectives resonating with the themes of transformation and revelation central to her work. It was a merging of worlds, opposites. Looking beyond. Luxury and simplicity. Sky and water.
I ask her what is her favourite place to wander around and a corner/street she returns to every time. Her answer comes without hesitation:
‘‘It is the square, Campo Santa Maria Nova, just next to the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. The campo feels like a still movie: you can simply sit and watch life unfold, or step into the scene yourself. There is an antique bookshop on the square where I go to look for art posters, and I have included it in my second Breakfast Club art/love letter.’’
She also mentions Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Encountering Tintoretto’s vast symbolic murals there, Santa GAÏA found inspiration in their spiritual radiance and narrative depth, particularly in the way they embody mystical experience through visual rhythm. This encounter inspired her approach to the Dance of Seven Veils—a body of work rooted in the biblical story of Salome yet conceived as a distilled, contemporary meditation.
Venice is full of these small miracles, moments where the familiar suddenly shifts, making me curious about what still manages to surprise her in Venice, while returning to the city again and again. Her answer feels like Venice itself, unexpected and warm:
“Venice is a never-ending discovery. Beyond its breathtaking art, luminous light, and ever-flowing water, it is the people I meet along the way who make the city truly magical. A brief encounter over an espresso in the morning can lead to a fancy dinner in a palazzo by night. It’s all about staying open and embracing the flow.”
For Santa GAÏA, Venice feels like a stage set for a play that never ends. Not Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice exactly, but something adjacent to it - a quiet negotiation between the self you show and the one you keep tucked away. A dance between losing yourself and finding yourself again.
“In Venice, you can disappear without ever being lost,” she says. ‘‘The tide brings you back. The stones remember your footsteps. Beauty and decay sit comfortably next to each other, like two old friends who no longer feel the need to pretend.’’
And so, before she leaves the city and promises to be back sooner rather than later, I asked her a final question, maybe the only impossible one: how she would describe Venice in a single sentence to someone who has never been there. She smiled, thought for a moment, and then answered:
“VENICE IS AN ILLUSION, A DREAM YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO WAKE UP FROM.”
Where to go
Palazzo Grimani, Museo Fortuny, Rialto market and the Miracoli church would be my top choice. Sure there is also Palazzo Grassi, Guggenheim and many more amazing spaces to soak up art, culture, ambience.
Where to eat/drink
I’d start the day with a breakfast at hotel The Gritti Palace, go for a pre lunch to All’Arco cicchetti, lunch at Trattoria da Bepi, apero drink in Venice Venice hotel (please, take the Americano - cocktail not the coffee), have dinner at Vini da Arturo and finish the day at Harry’s Bar and order their iconic Bellini.
