Catherine Bennett

Venice is already bursting at the seams with museums and cultural events, and now Italy’s city on the water has a brand new addition to its art scene. It’s called Le Stanze della Fotografia, and you’ll need to take a ride on the vaporetto, Venice’s public waterbus, to see it. The new temple to photography opened on March 29 in a historical building on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, just opposite St Mark’s Square. To get to Le Stanze, you’ll need to head to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop B, where boats leave regularly for Giudecca island, and take the red line 2 across the water. The museum is built across two floors in a former customs warehouse that was turned into a boarding school in the ’50s. Since then, major restoration work has opened up the space, uncovering its high vaulted ceilings and exposing two large windows, giving visitors a breathtaking view of the lagoon. Thanks to architects and set designers from Venice’s famous theatre Teatro Fenice, the gallery uses moving set pieces to adapt the space to different exhibition layouts. Le Stanze della Fotografia is a joint project by the island’s Fondazione Giorgio Cini (which has one of Europe’s most extensive photography collections) and Marsilio Arte, which formerly showcased photographers like Sebastião Salgado and David La Chapelle at La Casa dei Tre Oci on Venice’s southern island of Giudecca. The inaugural exhibition at the new space is a retrospective of the Italian photographer Ugo Mulas, starting with his