Poveglia, the lagoon island between quarantines and legends

In the southern lagoon of Venice, between the Lido and Pellestrina, lies a small abandoned island dominated by a solitary bell tower. This is Poveglia, which in recent decades has become famous worldwide as the most frightening island in Europe. Behind this reputation, built by television programmes and websites devoted to the paranormal, there is however a real history, made of lagoon communities, wars, epidemics and health institutions, which deserves to be told with respect and caution.

A medieval community

In the Middle Ages Poveglia was an inhabited centre of some importance, with its own community and a church dedicated to Saint Vitalis, whose bell tower survives. The inhabitants enjoyed certain privileges granted by the Republic. During the War of Chioggia, fought between Venice and Genoa from 1378 to 1381, the island found itself in a strategic zone and the population was moved elsewhere, marking the beginning of its decline as a settlement.

In the following centuries the island served above all a military role and helped control the lagoon. One of the octagonal fortifications that dotted the waters around Venice was built there, designed to defend the approaches to the city from the harbour mouths of the Lido and Malamocco. The military structures, altered several times, profoundly changed the island's profile, which lost its character as an inhabited village and became an outpost watching over the waters.

The age of quarantines

Venice was one of the first European cities to organise systematic defence against epidemics, with lazarettos set up as early as the fifteenth century on other islands of the lagoon. At the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth, Poveglia too was designated a health station, where ships suspected of carrying contagious diseases were held in quarantine and crews and goods were inspected.

It is likely that people who died during these periods were buried on the island, as happened in all places of isolation. The enormous figures circulating online, with tens of thousands of victims and the soil described as largely made of human remains, are not, however, confirmed by reliable sources and should be considered exaggerations.

The hospice and modern tales

In the twentieth century a care home for the elderly operated on the island, remaining open until the end of the 1960s. After its closure the buildings were abandoned and began to decay. It is on this recent phase that the best-known legend has been grafted: that of a doctor who supposedly carried out cruel experiments on patients and then threw himself from the bell tower, tormented by presences. There is no documentation whatsoever of these events.

Today Poveglia is publicly owned and access is not permitted without authorisation, both because the structures are dangerous and to protect the site. Those who approach by boat can observe the bell tower and the remains of the buildings from a distance. It should be remembered that this is a place where real people rest, and that respect ought to prevail over morbid curiosity.

The true history of Poveglia is more interesting than its legend. It tells how the Republic of Venice faced the threat of epidemics for centuries, organising a network of health islands unique of its kind, and how places of suffering are later transfigured by the contemporary imagination. Telling it with caution means restoring dignity to those who passed through it.