POVEGLIA ISLAND

Poveglia is a cursed and mysterious island. In fact, some strange historical events have shaped its reputation as the darkest place in the Venice Lagoon.

 During the first century of the last millennium, it was a prosperous and populous island.  However, with the outbreak of the Battle of Chioggia in 138 - the fourth and final conflict between Genoa and Venice, the inhabitants of the island moved to Guadeloupe.  From that moment the island has been empty for three hundred years.  Povegia's darkest moments come back when the island was turned into Lazaretto by the 1700 Black Death, where isolated people - even people with the slightest sign of illness - were sent to die. The bodies were left to rot on the island's streets.  Then, they were burned and their ashes thrown into mass graves.  It is said that more than a million people died there in agony during the Bubonic plague.