San Lazzaro Degli Armeni - Background

Background

The islet's isolation, at some distance from the principal islands forming the actual city of Venice, made it an ideal location for the quarantine station and leper colony founded there in the twelfth century, receiving its name from St. Lazarus, patron saint of lepers. Abandoned in the sixteenth century, in 1717 it was given by the ruling council of Venice to a group of Armenian monks. Mekhitar and his seventeen monks built a monastery, restored the old church, and enlarged the island to its present 30,000 square metres, about four times its original area.

Its founder's temperament and natural gifts for scholarly pursuits immediately set the Mekhitarist Order in the forefront of Oriental studies: the monastery published Armenian historical, philological and literary works and related material, renowned for their scholarship and accuracy as well as for the beauty of the editions, on its own multilingual presses, which shut down in 1991, although an eighteenth-century printing press may still be seen. S. Lazzaro houses a 150,000-volume library, as well as a museum with over 4,000 Armenian manuscripts and many Arab, Indian and Egyptian artifacts collected by the monks or received as gifts.

The monastery and its gardens, noted for its peacocks, may be reached by vaporetto (#20 from S. Zaccaria, near Piazza San Marco). There is one guided tour a day, starting at 15.25 with the vaportetto leaving at 15.10 from S.Zaccaria. Groups of visitors may ask a private tour with different schedule. There are tours in several different languages. It also has a long tradition of hospitality to scholars and students, among whom Lord Byron, who studied Armenian there during much of the year 1816.