The term ‘quarantine’ itself comes from the Italian phrase for 40 days — quaranta giorni —the duration that ships carrying goods and their crews had to wait before they could dock in Venice in the 1400s. In 1911, Encyclopedia Britannica described quarantine as a “thing of the past,” reflecting the scientific optimism at the time. While advances in medicine, including vaccines and antibiotics, have saved millions of lives and eradicated diseases such as smallpox, non-pharmaceutical interventions remain an essential part of preventing the spread of new and emerging infectious diseases. Here we take a look back at the history of these practices and daily life in the world’s earliest quarantine bases, in Venice...
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| Lazzaretto Vecchio as viewed from the Lido of Venice |
These measures were enacted in response to a growing understanding of disease transmission after the Great Plague of the previous century. The first maritime quarantine base was built on an island near Venice, Italy in 1423, known as Lazzaretto Vecchio, followed shortly thereafter by the larger Lazzaretto Nuovo. After Venice, quarantine bases were established first throughout the Mediterranean to ports such as Genoa and Marseille and then beyond.
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| An interior view of the Tezon Grande, the main storage house at Lazzaretto Nuovo. |
Quarantine has had dual functions since even these earliest days— as both an effective measure to prevent the spread of infectious disease but also as a political tool to naturalize authority and create divisions in a globalizing world. When used as the latter, quarantine practices are both ineffective at thwarting disease spread and harmful to those targeted. Recent xenophobic statements around COVID-19 serve the same purpose as these past abuses, to create an “us” and “them” in a situation that requires global cooperation.
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| The personal effects of sailors who stayed at Lazzaretto Nuovo in the 17th century. |
When I first visited the Lazzarettos of Venice, the lives of sailors passing time there 500 years ago seemed foreign, like “a thing of the past.” But now, I see in the objects of daily life — the die, the drinking cups, the figurines, the graffiti on the wall — people who are connecting with those they are quarantined with, who are turning to creative expression, who are scared, who are bored, who are passing the time with games and food and wine, who are hopeful that their actions will keep their loved ones and strangers alike well.
I highly recommend a visit to Lazzaretto Nuovo. More information can be found here: https://lazzarettiveneziani.it/it
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The text above is from an article I wrote a few years ago. I was so lucky to be a guest contributor to "These Strange Times" online zine, created by the incredibly talented Grace Zhou and Dilshanie Perera. Check out my article and the full issue here: https://inthesestrangetimes.substack.com/p/issue-3-plague-days-in-venice
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