Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsJust beyond the shores of Venice proper — a city comprised of dozens of islands — lie two uninhabited isles with a rich history. Today these landmasses are landscapes of grasses, trees, and worn stone buildings. But once they were among the most important gateways to this storied trading city.
Together, these islands were at the center of Venice’s vast public health response to the plague. Building on earlier traditions of separating the sick from the healthy, the Venetian government became the first in the Mediterranean region to systematically use large-scale methods of isolation and information-collecting to monitor and fight infectious diseases.
Vecchio offers archaeologists a handful of buildings to study. They reveal that the island was a treatment base for infected patients. There, doctors, wearing the elaborate beak-like plague masks of the period, did their best to treat the disease.Fewer structures remain on Nuovo. Historical records, however, suggest Nuovo consisted of warehouses for goods, along with more than 100 rooms to quarantine sailors and crews before allowing them into Venice.
While it operated, the Venetian system involved hundreds of city officials. Prior to it, community care for the sick was relegated to charity efforts and religious orders. Archaeologists are gaining insights into the limits of the Venetian system by studying mass graves on both islands that were discovered in the past two decades. Matteo Borrini, a forensic anthropologist and lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, has examined and studied about 200 bodies discovered on Nuovo.