Poveglia: The Island Venice Will Not Talk About

If you take the vaporetto south from Venice, heading towards Lido and Malamocco, you'll spot it on your right. It's a low, green island with an old brick bell tower, a broken dock, and crumbling walls along its shore. The boat doesn't stop there. No one ever gets off. Poveglia is the one spot in the Venetian lagoon that the city seems to have quietly decided you can't buy. Its story is a sad one, unfolding in three distinct parts. People lived on the island starting in the ninth century, but it was abandoned after the wars of the fourteenth century. Then, in 1793, two ships carrying the plague were sent here, turning the island into a "lazaretto" – a quarantine station. It served this purpose through many epidemics until the nineteenth century. Later, from 1922 until the late 1960s, it became a psychiatric hospital. Around these real events, many stories have grown, often repeated as facts by TV shows. You might hear that half the island's soil is human ashes, that 160,000 people died there, or that a doctor performed harsh brain surgeries (lobotomies) in the bell tower before jumping to his death. There's almost no proof for the story about the doctor, and the huge death tolls are simply made up. The truth is somber enough, though – we know there were mass burials during plague years on many lagoon islands, and mental hospitals in Italy in the 1900s were often very difficult places to be.

The island has been officially closed off and left to nature for decades. The buildings are unsafe, plants have overgrown the old paths, and landing without permission is forbidden. In 2014, the state tried to sell a long-term lease for the island, but the winning bidder backed out. After that, a group of citizens started a campaign to keep it public. Something might be built there eventually, but so far, nothing has been. So, how can you see this mysterious island without causing trouble? The best way is by water. Private boat tours licensed in Venice can take you on a slow trip around Poveglia as part of a tour of the southern lagoon. These tours often also visit Lazzaretto Nuovo – an island that does welcome visitors, has excavated plague burial sites, and offers excellent tours led by volunteers – as well as the working island of Pellestrina. Try to go at "golden hour," just before sunset, when the bell tower glows and the walls turn a deep, dried-blood red. Whatever you do, don't try to hire a fisherman to drop you off at the dock. It's illegal, the floors inside the buildings are crumbling, and it just makes things harder for the people trying to protect this historic place. The real story, anyway, is the view from about fifty meters offshore: Venice sparkling behind you, and this dark green island steadfastly refusing to be developed.