“Quarantine” is a Venetian word? Sì.
Jul 25, 2008 Instructions for Use, events & offerings
It’s from quarantena, the period of 40 days that cargo and merchandise arriving from faraway lands was sequestered on the island of Lazaretto Nuovo. All sorts of treatments were applied to the goods held in storage there in the hopes of extinguishing whatever bestie might be lurking that could potentially carry the dreaded bubonic plague to the city. Venice was decimated by two major plagues barely fifty years apart (1576 and 1630), a factor which certainly contributed in no small part to the Republic’s eventual demise.
