The Island of San Michele

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Church of San Michele in Isola
Isola di San Michele (San Michele Island)
Venice, September 2012

“There is now an island of the dead close to the city. S. Michele once sustained a monastery devoted to learning but in the nineteenth century a cemetery was constructed here, so that the cadavers would no longer be close to the living population of Venice. The bodies are placed in little marble drawers like an enormous sideboard of mortality. The church of S. Michele, built some four centuries earlier, is like a whitened sepulchre guarding the site. Its recumbent corpses outnumber by many times the inhabitants of the city.” (Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City)