Fondamente Nove at the Celestia: The Island of the Dead
Why is it significant?
Stand at the edge of the quay and look out across open water. Ahead of you and a little to the left, a low island is wrapped in a red-brick wall, with the dark points of cypress trees rising above it. Further back, the bell towers and chimneys of Murano.
Key Facts
| Place | Fondamente Nove at the Celestia: The Island of the Dead |
|---|---|
| Address | Fondamenta de la Celestia, Castello, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43960, 12.34900 |
| Part of Walk | Lions, Shipyards and Saints: Venice's Castello and the Arsenale Beyond the Crowds |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the edge of the quay and look out across open water. Ahead of you and a little to the left, a low island is wrapped in a red-brick wall, with the dark points of cypress trees rising above it. Further back, the bell towers and chimneys of Murano. And on your right, the long brick wall of the Arsenale runs straight out into the lagoon.
That walled island is San Michele, the cemetery of Venice. In the early 1800s, under Napoleon, burials inside the city were banned for reasons of hygiene, and the island, later joined to its neighbour San Cristoforo, became the place where Venetians go to rest. Funerals still travel there by water, the coffin on a dark launch, the family following across the lagoon.
Its white church, San Michele in Isola, was begun by Mauro Codussi in 1469, one of the earliest Renaissance churches in Venice, in pale Istrian stone that seems to float on the water. And the cemetery holds some unexpected foreigners. The composer Igor Stravinsky and the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev lie in the Orthodox section, the poet Ezra Pound in the Protestant one, and the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who loved Venice in winter, was reburied there in 1997.
Land is so scarce that for most Venetians the island is not forever. After a number of years, most remains are moved to an ossuary to make room for the newly dead. Even in death, this city has to share every square metre.
The quiet streets behind you once shook to a catastrophe. In 1569 a huge explosion in the gunpowder stores of the Arsenale badly damaged the convent of the Celestia nuns right next door, and the blast was felt across the city. Now turn your back to the lagoon and head south through Campo de la Celestia and Campo Santa Ternita, then along the canal to the great land gate of the Arsenale.