Poveglia island has been many things: a place of quarantine, a banishment for those infected with the plague and, more recently, an asylum for the mentally ill. Currently, the site is just an uninhabited island in the lagoon of Venice, between Venice and Lido.
The particularity of this island lies in her popular stories are and to be off limits to visitors, being under the control of the Italian Government. Contrary to several islands in the lagoon of Venice, which are occupied by mansions or large tourist resorts, Poveglia remains uninhabited and what's left of your past will rot over time. Maybe it's the stories that tell about the location that the island remains uninhabited.
Although the inhabitants of Venice trying to deny the rumors that run about the island, the truth is that they say is a haunted place. One of the rumors that if account is that half of the soil of the island is composed of human ashes due to the amount of people who were burned or buried on site during the black plague. Another is that the mental institution run by a butcher and torturer who committed suicide because of the island Tower and survived the crash, and was strangled by ghosts of former patients. Rumors.
Also says that local fishermen don't fish around the island, fearing that their networks get the bones of those who were buried there.
Poveglia's story dates back to Roman civilization, when the site was used to isolate victims of the plague. Centuries later, the site was permanently inhabited, Venice was attacked by Genoa and the inhabitants of Poveglia were displaced to Giudecca. At the same time, the Government of Venice built a Fort, in order to counter the enemy's fleet. The Fort, Octagon shaped, became known as "the cage", and there remains to this day. The island was uninhabited and then when the first outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe became a Lazaretto, a place of quarantine for those who enter in Venice.
But the confinement in the Lazaretto of Poveglia was not always a death sentence. Despite being a boring place, as Ransom Riggs writes, who visited the island to better understand the rumors, wasn't necessarily unpleasant. Temporary residents had their own room â€" sometimes even a small house â€" and could receive and send correspondence.
However, during the worst outbreaks of the plague, Poveglia was invaded by thousands of infected, that they eventually die there. Due to the high number of deaths, the corpses were buried in mass graves or burned, when the trenches were full. Local stories indicate that died in Poveglia more than 160 thousand people victims of the plague.
Agriculture and fishing are a reality
Recent excavations on the island of Lazaretto Vecchio, close to Poveglia, revealed several mass graves. In the middle of the remains, experts found several corpses with stones in his mouth, which means, according to the medieval and Renaissance beliefs, this was a vampire, which served to feed even more rumors of the island.
The Lazaretto of Poveglia ended in 1814 and the island was uninhabited until 1922, when it was built a psychiatric asylum. The official data of the institution indicated that the space was a nursing home. However, several visits to the island after the closure of the institution, in 1968, indicate that the institution was more a hospice for patients with mental disorders to an asylum.
True or not, since the asylum the island has been uninhabited, with only the cultivation of small vineyards because, according to farmers, the soil at that location is quite rich.
One of the rumors that Ransom Rigs found be lie is that fishermen don't fish in the vicinity of the island. On his visit, the journalist and blogger found multiple networks deposited in the channel that separates the island from the Octagon.
Find out if the stories that tell about the site are true or not is also difficult, since visiting the island is difficult, since the gondoliers refuse to transport people to the site.
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