In a lot of ways, it's just one more beautiful European setting.

The land is covered in lush green trees.

A 12th century bell tower hovers above a sprawling complex of ruined buildings, and it

has the manicured coastline and man-made seawalls that you might expect from a city on the

northeastern coast of Italy.

With that beauty hides a darker past.

Thousands of plague victims are buried beneath those idyllic green fields.

That manicured coastline is actually part of an 18th century fort, where hundreds of French

soldiers were brought ashore and slaughtered, and those old ruins jutting up from the trees

are all that remain of an early 20th century asylum for the mentally ill.

You'll never accidentally stumble into this ancient town, though, because it's an island,

Povelia Island to be specific, and only the people who want to go there ever do.

Located just two miles south of the Grand City of Venice, Povelia is an abandoned time capsule

of pain and suffering, one that illustrates the true power of islands.

Unlike a metropolis like London or Los Angeles, there's a limit to how far an island can

spread out over time.

Though shorelines act like a sort of wall, trapping whatever happens there, inside.

Sure, they might offer more privacy or safety, but as far back as we can remember, communities

have been using islands to contain their diseased and undesirables.

Places like Alcatraz and Rikers Island are infamous homes to brutal prisons.

St Helena in the South Atlantic was used by the British as the home in exile of Napoleon

Bonaparte.

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