The story of this island in Venice amazes by the way people tell it. During the epidemic of the Black Plague, the island was the last refuge for about 160,000 patients, with 50% of its soil consisting of the ashes of burnt corpses.
In the 1920’s, the Italian government opened a hospital for the mentally ill on the island. The patients kept complaining that they had headaches and that the island was full of souls that died in terrible agony. Moreover, the head physician is said to have conducted terrible experiments with the ill. It remains a mystery, though, why he committed suicide, having jumped from the island belfry. After that, the hospital was closed.
Nowadays, the island is empty, but there are many photos of abandoned hospital rooms and the belfry on the Internet.
