Poveglia Island, Venice, Italy

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When you think of Venice, you immediately think of gondolas, Renaissance buildings, cafés, or St. Mark’s Basilica. However, to the south of the city, about ten kilometers away, there is an island that the majority of Venetians consider cursed. The island of Poveglia became famous due to its abandoned psychiatric hospital, but also because of the many rumors that the island would be haunted: anyone who dared to venture there would soon regret it.

Here is a glimpse into the history of an island whose destiny was initially calm, but which quickly became a place feared by all.

Peaceful beginnings

Before being called Poveglia, the island was called « Popilia » or « Dei Pioppi » (poplars in Italian), probably because of its type of vegetation. Divided into two parts, the island is said to have appeared in history around the year 421, when the inhabitants of Padua and Este joined the island in order to flee the barbarian invasions, including the hordes of Attila the Hun. Little by little, the people create a small community that crosses the centuries without making too many waves. The inhabitants had their own garden, fished, and even extracted salt.

Around the second half of the ninth century, the island was home to about two hundred families from Venice. Most of them were servants of Doge Pietro Tradonica, assassinated in 864, following a conspiracy of Venetian nobles. Before being freed by the late Doge’s successor, Orso Partecipazion, the servants barricaded themselves in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. The new doge granted them the right to live on the Island of Poveglia, in addition to having access to a number of privileges.

In less than one hundred years, the community of Poveglia grew to more than eight hundred houses. The island is rich in vineyards and salt marshes. In 1378, it becomes an autonomous republic governed by a Ducal Gastaldo and seventeen Consiglieri.

Around the 14th century, the island gained in importance due to the establishment of a podestat. However, the decline of Poveglia begins around 1379, when the Choggia War happened. Even though the population decreases considerably, those who remain on the island are still entitled to certain privileges, such as tax exemption. Unfortunately, the city of Venice was attacked by a Genoese fleet. Therefore, the inhabitants of the Island of Poveglia must be moved to the Giudecca, one of the main islands in the Venice lagoon.

Several articles consulted claim that the island of Poveglia would have been used during the great black plague epidemic of 1347 to 1352, but these rumors are false.

Doge: Elected head of the Republic of Venice or the Republic of Genoa.
Gastaldo : Representative of a king or a nobleman on his estate during medieval Italy, more specifically among the Lombards /Intendant in a noble family.
Consiglieri: Organ of the Republic of Venice in the Middle Ages.
Chioggia War: Conflict between the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa, which lasted from 1378 to 1381. It was part of a conflict between the two city-states since they began their commercial competition around the 11th century.
Podestà: Title given in the Middle Ages to the first magistrate of certain cities in Italy and the South of France.

A quarantine island

Around the 16th century, the island was transformed into a lazaretto, since the other two Venetian lazaretti (Lazzaretto Vecchio and Lazzaretto Nuovo) were saturated. This change allows to accommodate travelers carrying diseases (such as plague) for a period of quarantine. To prevent the disease from spreading, some Venetians with less severe symptoms would have been sent there after being separated from their families. Unfortunately, these measures resulted in several deaths.

Considering its new functions, the island is gradually deserted by the inhabitants. It remained uninhabited until 1527, when the doge offered Camaldolese monks to settle there, which they refused. Alas, several outbreaks of plague took place during the following years. In 1576, about 50,000 people, a third of the population of Venice, died of the plague and were buried on the island. There will be more than twenty outbreaks of plague in Venice.

The great Italian plague, which occurred between 1629 and 1631, when soldiers returning from the Thirty Years’ War brought the infection back to the city of Mantua. During the next two years, the patient spread to most major Italian cities, including Venice. The plague victims were then exiled to several islands, including the island of Poveglia. More than 46 000 people are buried on the island, but it will be 140 000 inhabitants (who will not all be buried on the island) of the Republic of Venice who will perish during this epidemic.

Starting in 1645, the Venetian government built five octagonal forts to protect and better control the entrances to the lagoon. Of these five buildings, only the fort built on Poveglia has survived the passage of time.

At the end of the 18th century, two laws were established to ensure that ships suspected of having cases of plague or contagious diseases on board remained in quarantine. Around 1777, the island came under the jurisdiction of the Magistrato alla Sanità (health magistrate). The ships, their crews and passengers did not come directly to the Lido of Venice, but often used the Poveglia canal and transited through Poveglia, where a large ship still served as a lazaretto. Since the buildings are used to accommodate several people for periods of forty days, other more suitable buildings are added to the only lazaretto on the island. Also, in order to avoid contamination, new wells were dug.

During this period, there was a church dedicated to San Vitale, which had a crucifix now kept in the church of Malamocco and a painting by Titian. However, the church was closed in 1806 and later destroyed. All that remains is the bell tower, which has been transformed into a lighthouse to better guide ships that have to quarantine themselves.

Lazaretto: Establishment for quarantining crews, passengers and goods coming from ports where plague and other contagious diseases were rampant.
Camaldolese: Benedictine monastic order of pontifical right, founded by St. Romuald of Ravenna in 1012 in Tuscany under the rule of St. Benedict.
Thirty Years’ War: A series of armed conflicts that tore Europe apart between 1618 and 1648, triggered by, among other things, the revolt of the Protestant Czechs of the House of Habsburg, the repression that followed, and the desire of the Habsburgs to increase their hegemony and that of Catholicism in the Holy Roman Empire.
Lido of Venice: Thin barrier coastline stretching over a dozen kilometers between the Venice lagoon and the Adriatic Sea, in the Veneto region of northern Italy.
Titian : Italian (Venetian) painter and engraver of the Venetian school, born in 1488, and died in August 1576; author of a great pictorial work.

Abandonment and isolation

Centuries pass and Poveglia still retains its status as a quarantine island where ships suspected of having sick people on board must stop. At this point there are no more permanent inhabitants on the island. It remained a quarantine island until the end of the Second World War, during which time it was occupied by soldiers and the corpses of war victims were buried there.

In 1922, a psychiatric hospital was built on the island. According to persistent rumors, patients, and staff members, upon their arrival on the island, begin to see the ghosts of the tormented spirits of the many victims of the plague (a total of 160,000 bodies are said to have been burned and/or buried on Poveglia), five centuries earlier. Curious to know the source of the problem and to demystify the claims of his patients, a resident doctor set out to investigate the phenomena by performing lobotomies and other dubious and dangerous experiments on his patients. One of the most popular rumors on the island of Poveglia is that this doctor, tormented and tortured by the patients who were victims of his experiments, but also by the many people who died and were buried on the island, threw himself from the top of the hospital bell tower.

As a result of these events, which took place around 1968, the hospital, and by the same token the island, was abandoned and has remained uninhabited ever since. In 2004, the only activity found on the island is viticulture, even though most of the soil is made up of human remains.

What’s left of it today?

In 2014, the Italian government announces its intention to definitively separate itself from the island, which is now part of the state domain. The island of Poveglia is then auctioned off for a 99-year lease. First of all, in order to prevent this historic place from becoming a holiday resort, the Venetians created an association « Poveglia per Tutti » (Poveglia for All). This association succeeds in raising 440,000 euros (about $680,000 Canadian dollars). However, it got the upper hand when businessman Luigi Brugnaro made an offer of 513,000 euros (about $793,000 CDN) to transform the present buildings, the former psychiatric hospital and rest home, into luxury hotels.

In 2016, the Young Architects association launched a competition inviting architects to submit ideas for the construction of a university campus on the island.

To date, the island is off-limits to tourists and even fishing boats stay away. Because of the island’s morbid reputation, rumor has it that it would be possible to bribe a carrier for 200 euros ($300 CDN) to get there. Apart from the few buildings that are still standing but also forbidden to enter, the vegetation has regained its rights, giving the impression of being in the heart of an Amazonian forest. The structures, like a bridge separating the two main parts of the island, are almost impassable and dangerous, even for the most experienced explorer.

A « paradise » for ghost and paranormal hunters

Here, I use the term « paradise » very broadly. Like all abandoned places, the island of Poveglia attracts many curious and thrill-seeking people. However, locals recommend that tourists do not set foot on the island since it is considered cursed. According to analyses, more than 60% of the soil consists of human remains and ashes.

As mentioned above, one legend tells that a doctor would have thrown himself from the top of the bell tower, others say that he would have been pushed by the victims of his inhuman experiences. However, the sources do not say whether this doctor (or his spirit) was seen in the years following his death.

The few brave people who have reached the island in the last few years have felt an oppressive atmosphere there, have felt observed. The paranormal activity is tenfold during the night. Since 2009, paranormal investigation teams have reportedly heard voices, screams, laments, and unexplained noises. Researchers have reportedly recorded an unusual electromagnetic field throughout the island, even though no electricity source is available on the island. Also, visitors would have claimed to hear a bell ringing, even though there hasn’t been a bell since the 1960s and the nearest church is more than 10 kilometers away.

The island attracts not only paranormal investigation groups, but also curious tourists, perhaps too curious for their own good. In 2016, a group of Colorado Americans, who apparently had access to the island during the night, had to be rescued by the Venetian firemen. Upon arrival, the tourists were supposedly in a state of shock and panic, claiming to have seen and heard paranormal entities.

According to paranormal investigations and the inhabitants of Venice, the island of Poveglia would be considered one of the most haunted islands in the world. Unless authorized by the city authorities, anyone attempting to venture onto the island without prior permission is subject to heavy fines.

The island that has also been nicknamed « The Island of No Return » is today as attractive to people who are adept at the paranormal or urbex (urban exploration), as it is to historians. As soon as it entered History, the island appeared as an almost paradisiacal place for those who lived there. Today, it is only the remnant of a bygone era, where hundreds of thousands of souls have perished.

So, a former quarantine island, where hundreds of thousands of bodies are buried, where a psychiatric hospital took in patients for more than 40 years, during which many of them died, would you dare to set foot there?