One day for discovering islets bent for agriculture in the north lagoon, that still to this day supply a great deal of city markets. From Vignole to Sant'Erasmo, the “vegetable gardens of Serenissima” on Lazzaretto Nuovo which offers its visitors considerable hints of naturalistic and landscape interest.
For nature lovers, this area of the north lagoon constitutes a journey of great charm, rich with hidden and solitary corners, amongst picturesque vegetable gardens that are alternated with sandbanks and fishing valleys, through small rural villages of Treporti, Le Mesole, Lio Piccolo and Saccagnana, on the discovery of unusual and suggestive landscapes that become privileged places to discreetly observed flora and fauna of the lagoon.
This itinerary will lead you on discovery of the green conventual complex of the island of San Francesco del Deserto, a tiny island not far away from Burano and Sant'Erasmo and with its gardens and its secret vegetable gardens it today represents a small hermitage of piece and silence amidst north lagoon of Venice.
This itinerary, that requires an entire day, will take you to the middle of the basin of St Mark’s on the discovery of two places which, for their calling of islands-convents, had for centuries hosted diverse monastic orders that were, in silence and piece of the harmonious and verdant lagoon, rediscovering and oasis of tranquillity, ideal for their necessary seclusion from the world: the island of San Servolo, today headquarters of Venice International University and the island of S. Lazzaro degli Armeni, still occupied by the founding order.