Poveglia sits in the Venetian Lagoon, just a short ride from Venice. From far away it looks calm and green. Up close, it feels like a locked room full of old pain. Once, boats brought the sick here during the Black Death. People were taken from their homes with no goodbyes. Fires burned day and night, and the island turned into a grave that never stopped growing.
Years later, Poveglia was used again, this time as an asylum. The same water that held back disease also held back the world. Stories say patients heard coughing in empty halls, saw shadow figures in ruined wards, and feared a doctor who did terrible things in the bell tower. Even now, the island is off limits, and locals still avoid its shore, as if the quarantine never ended.
