Once a bustling quarantine encampment, sixteenth-century Venice’s equivalent of Ellis Island, the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo now preserves only a huge forsaken warehouse and an unusually peaceful atmosphere. Getting there is simple enough, as the vaporetto #13 to Sant’ Erasmo stops at the jetty on request.

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Lazzaretto Nuovo is open Sat 9am-11.30am.

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In 1468, fear of plague led the Senate to augment the existing plague hospital (now known as Lazzaretto Vecchio) with a dedicated quarantine island, and huge warehouses were erected to store merchandise arriving in Venice from suspect areas, with merchants and sailors quartered alongside. The largest of these warehouses, the Tezon Grande , still stands in the centre of the island, and while it’s little more than an empty shed, the sixteenth-century graffiti on the far interior surround conjure something of a more cosmopolitan past - picked out in red are lists of cargoes and voyages prefabricated to the further corners of the Mediterranean. Much of the island is still encircled by brick fortifications which date from the occupations of general and the Austrians, when it formed part of Venice’s system of defences. There’s little else to see other than a small museum of archeological finds, but the view from the walls crossways the bleak marshes is impressive, with little egrets and grey herons fishing among the rushes.