Poveglia

After eleven years of campaigning, the people of Venice have been given this island back.

Poveglia is a small island in the Venetian Lagoon between Venice and the Lido, divided into three parts by two small canals. It first appears in the historical record in 421, and was populated and farmed until its residents fled warfare in 1379.

The name was anciently Popilia, either from the Latin populus, meaning poplar, or from the Via Popilia-Annia built by the consul Publius Popilius Laenas. On 16th-century maps it appears as Poveggia. After the Lombard invasion of the mainland cities in the 6th century, settlers used the island as a refuge, and it grew into a fortified settlement with a castle. By 864 it was a fully inhabited centre living on fishing and salt production. It was destroyed during the War of Chioggia between Venice and the Republic of Genoa.

For more than a hundred years from 1776 the island served as a quarantine station for arriving ships and cargo, and later as a psychiatric hospital, which closed in 1968. Decades of neglect followed, and that abandonment is what the island is now famous for.

The current chapter is better. In April 2025 the State Property Agency granted use of the northern part of the island to the association Poveglia per tutti, which had been fighting for the result for eleven years. The concession runs six years and the association intends to turn the northern islet into an urban lagoon park.

So check before you plan anything: this is an island in transition from ruin to public park, and what you can reach is changing.