Torcello — the oldest church in the lagoon

The lagoon's first settlement, founded in the 5th century and largely abandoned by the 12th — malaria, silting, then plague. The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (founded 639) holds a Byzantine mosaic of the Last Judgement on its west wall that's as terrifying now as it was a thousand years ago. Climb the bell tower for the view across to the Adriatic. The whole island has perhaps thirty residents and one open restaurant. Twenty minutes from Burano on the vaporetto.

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