The lagoon is scattered with tiny islands which look utterly abandoned and wild; many, however, were once not only populated but very well-kept, mostly housing convents or monastries. One such island which you’ll see closeby is San Giacomo in Paludo; like many of its kind, it hides a fascinating diverse history. It was initially a place of recovery where boatmen coming in from the mainland would rest on the way to Vecnie; it then was turned into a convent, but the nuns there allegedly engaged in somewhat unholy activities with frequent male visitors, and when the last two nuns moved to Torcello, san Giacomo here became a lazzaretto for lepers, and once the plague was over, it was turned into a monastery. It lost all its religious functions in 1779, and with Napoleon’s arrival in the arly 19th century, almost all of its buildings were torn down, as you can see.
