VENICE 2017: The San Michele Island Cemetery

So, after lunch on Murano (last post), we hopped on the vaporetto for the 1.5 km. ride to the San Michele island, which we had passed that morning.

See how close it is, halfway between Venice and Murano.  (Wiki image)

But how many tourists ever visit San Michele???

You can actually see the island easily from the northern coast of Venice.

What you see is a walled island...and what's inside is a cemetery.

Have you ever heard of an island that is a cemetery?

It became a cemetery in 1807 "when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland...was unsanitary." 

The Church of San Michele from 1469 is the main landmark of the island,

the first Renaissance church in Venice.

See how close the Murano lighthouse appears behind it (top-right).

In fact, on our way to Murano that morning, look what we saw leaving the cemetery stop.

There had just been a service, after which the casket was being transported back to Venice.

Because of increasing lack of space, most bodies are now buried on the mainland.

But later, there's the Murano lighthouse again, when we left after lunch,

and then quickly rounded the church on our way to the San Michele vaporetto stop.

The entrance through the wall is immediately there upon disembarking.

And then?  Where to begin!

Because it was right there, we decided to start with the church,

passing through the 15th century cloister.

We wondered if the flowers were from the morning's service?

You know how much we love these places of worship...

like museums to us who view them without a Roman Catholic upbringing.

Then we started to wander about.

There are three different cemeteries on the island and this is the Roman Catholic section.

We hate seeing the graves for children, of course...or for anyone, for that matter.

But we knew famous foreigners were also buried there:

Ezra Pound, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, for example.

We found the latter two, with their tell-tale signs of music and ballet, in the Greek Orthodox section.

As you'd expect, we often came to the wall's perimeter of the cemetery 

and had to turn into a new direction....

leading us to sections totally different from the last,

like to the 7 war graves from WWI.

This is the Protestant section of the cemetery.  Can you tell?

This San Cristoforo church originally belonged to San Cristoforo della Pace, 

another island that was eventually merged together with San Michele for the cemetery.

The original church was demolished and rebuilt in the mid-19th century,

but we did not visit it.

Lining the walls to the church were more tombs...

and then the other end of the cemetery.

I'm sure we missed a lot but we got the gist, which is what we had come to see.

As we left, we had a better view of the floating statue we had seen earlier:

It's the Barque of Dante created by Georgy Frangulyan in 2007.

"The composition is based on the episode from The Divine Comedy in which Dante and Virgil

cross the river Acheron, and the water boils with damned souls.  Virgil of bronze shows Dante

to the island of San Michele, where the famous Venetian cemetery is situated."

Supposedly it's the only statue in the world standing in the water.

It was created for the 52nd Venice Biennale but will now remain there forever.

A fitting close to an afternoon at the San Michele cemetery!