TORCELLO

A Ghost Island 10km to the North-East of Venice

 Michael Johanning (1985 UTC). Image published under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Torcello is an island 10km to the north-east of Venice. It was the first island in the lagoon to be settled by the Veneti after the collapse of the western Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions of  the fifth and sixth centuries.

Torcello was virtually impregnable and so became an attractive refuge for the enterprising merchants and tradesmen who fled the increasingly vulnerable Roman towns.

The island quickly developed trading links with the Byzantine empire and acquired considerable wealth through the extraction and sale of salt harvested from the lagoon marshes.

Torcello was once divided into ten parishes and possessed numerous palazzi, monastries, statues and monuments. At one time its population exceeded twenty thousand.

Although Torcello was officially part of the Byzantine Empire, it was ruled for all practical purposes by the Bishop of Altino who made the island his official See in 638 AD.

In 639 AD, the bishop commissioned the construction of the island's cathedral, the Santa Maria dell’ Assunta, which contains several splendid Byzantine treasures.

The beautiful golden 13th century mosaic of the Madonna and Child is displayed in the apse while the west wall is decorated by a huge 12th century mosaic depicting the Last Judgement.

The church is also notable for a series of intricate capitals which support the nave and the finely carved Byzantine panels of the rood screen.

The Gothic bell tower was added to the cathedral in the 11th century. At the same time work commenced on a neighbouring church, the Santa Fosca.

The Santa Fosca is surrounded on three sides by a colonnade of stilted arches; its spacious interior is crowned by a central dome supported by marble corinthian coloums.

Picture by Ricci Speziari. Image published under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License, version 2.5.

A large stone, roughly hewn into the shape of an over-sized armchair, is located in the vicinity of the Santa Fosca. It is reputed to be Attila's throne, but this is unlikely since Torcello was not settled until more than one hundred years after Attila's death.

Torcello became inaccessible in the twelfth century after the lagoon silted up. The increased volume of swampland lead to  malaria epidemics and the island's inhabitants migrated to the neighbouring settlements of Venice, Murano and Burano.

As the people left, they took most of the buildings with them. Whole structures were quickly dismantled so that the stones could be used elsewhere and Torcello became a ghost town virtually overnight.

A huge volume of archeological debris still lies where it was abandoned almost eight hundred years ago. This contributes to the island's poignant atmosphere which has captivated many visitors including Ernest Hemingway who stayed on Torcello for six months in 1949.

The Museo dell’Estuario, next to the Santa Fosca, displays  many of Torcello's archeological treasures but in truth the entire island is covered with the debris of an urgently abandoned Byzantine city.

Torcello can be reached by vaporetto from the Fondamente Nuove  (route 14). Crossings take approximately 45 minutes.

© 2006 LACT Limited. All rights reserved

 

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