Deadly plague ravaged this Italian island, thousands died and were burned, with ashes rumoured to make up 50% of the ground before it became home to a haunted mental hospital

Just beyond the postcard Venice of gondolas, palazzos and crowded bridges lies a small island with a history so dark that its reputation has long eclipsed its size. Poveglia sits in the Venetian Lagoon between Venice and Lido. Today, its abandoned buildings are swallowed by vegetation and its old hospital complex stands largely empty. But for centuries, the island served very different purposes: first as a settlement, then as a place of quarantine and death, and eventually as a hospital for the elderly and mentally ill.

One persistent legend claims that so many plague victims were buried or burned on the island that human ashes make up about 50% of its ground. Some popular accounts put the number of people who died there at as many as 160,000. That figure, however, belongs to the island's folklore rather than established scientific evidence.

Poveglia was once a living community

Historical accounts trace settlement on the island back to late antiquity. It became a refuge for people escaping unrest on the mainland and eventually developed into a community sustained by fishing, salt production and trade. By the medieval period, Poveglia had its own church, fortifications and population.

Then came the War of Chioggia, fought between Venice and Genoa from 1378 to 1381. The conflict devastated the island. Its inhabitants were evacuated to Venice and, after the fighting, Poveglia was left severely damaged. Attempts to repopulate it were unsuccessful, beginning the long transformation of a once-inhabited island into something very different.

The island became Venice's place of isolation

It was not until the 18th century that the Venetian Republic began putting the island back to work, initially using it as a storage site.

Its purpose changed dramatically in 1776, when Poveglia came under the authority of Venice's Public Health Office. At first, the island functioned largely as a customs and inspection point, but its isolation soon made it valuable for a far more urgent purpose, containing infectious disease.

The turning point came in 1793, when two ships stopped for inspection and several people aboard were found to have plague. Rather than allowing the suspected cases to enter Venice, authorities isolated them in Poveglia. With Venice's established quarantine islands, Lazzaretto Nuovo and Lazzaretto Vecchio, already at capacity, Poveglia was brought into the city's emergency system of disease control.

From that point, the island became a plague quarantine station, with infected or suspected patients separated from the wider population. Its distance from Venice offered authorities a natural barrier against contagion, but also placed Poveglia firmly on the dark side of the city's medical history.

Over time, stories of mass deaths, burials and burning on the island would help create the sinister reputation that still surrounds Poveglia today.

Did plague victims really make up half the soil?

Plague victims were taken to deep mass graves or “death pits”, where bodies were deposited as deaths accumulated. When the pits became full, they were covered with earth or the bodies were burned to prevent the further spread of disease.

It is from these accounts that the extraordinary 50% human-ash story appears to have developed. The claim is that repeated burials and cremations left so much human material in the soil that roughly half of Poveglia's ground is composed of ashes from plague victims.

The legend survives because it fits the island's very real history of quarantine and epidemic disease.

From quarantine station to hospital

Poveglia's connection with illness did not end when plague outbreaks subsided. Its buildings were subsequently adapted for other forms of healthcare. By the 20th century, the island had become associated with institutional care, including a long-term facility for elderly patients. Sources place the closure of its hospital operations in 1968, after which Poveglia gradually slipped into abandonment.

This period produced another layer of the island's mythology.

According to one version of the story, the doctor who ran the facility was regarded as increasingly unstable and was allegedly involved in experiments on patients, including lobotomies. The legend claims that he eventually went to the island's clock tower and jumped to his death.

But even that story has a supernatural twist. Rather than dying from the fall itself, local folklore says the doctor was engulfed by a mysterious fog that appeared around the tower and somehow caused his death. The tale has since become one of the most frequently repeated stories attached to Poveglia's abandoned hospital.

The ghost island gets a new future

Poveglia's story took an unexpected turn in 2025, when a group of Venetians sought to reclaim the island not as a tourist attraction, but as a place for locals.

The civic organisation Poveglia per Tutti, or “Poveglia for Everyone,” secured a concession for part of the island after years of campaigning against commercial development. The plan is to create a public green space while preserving Poveglia's character rather than turning it into another heavily visited Venetian attraction.