Venice's abandoned Poveglia island saved as public green space

Venice residents have secured the long-uninhabited island of Poveglia as a public green space, NPR reported on Friday, capping a year-long campaign that began when the island was eyed for development. The broadcaster's State of the World program describes a citizen brigade that organised to save a place Venice residents hold dear, and that is now transforming it into one of the lagoon's rare open public grounds.

Poveglia sits in the southern lagoon, a short crossing from the Lido and the guidebook routes that carry most visitors to Venice. For much of the last century it served as a place of isolation — for plague victims in earlier times and later for the sick — and its abandoned buildings have long fed an international appetite for so-called dark tourism. The news from NPR is that the island is now being remade not as a spectacle but as a green space for residents.

That distinction matters in a city whose municipal identity is increasingly defined by tourism. Open land in Venice is scarce, and nearly every empty corner of the lagoon has been proposed at some point for hotels, resorts or cultural venues. Poveglia, if the transformation holds, will stand as the exception: a piece of Venice preserved for the people who live there.