Itinerario naturalistico dell'isola di Sant'Erasmo

Venice's food has grown on Sant'Erasmo for centuries. Artichoke beds, vineyards, nineteenth-century fortifications and a sandy lagoon beach mark the largest island of the northern lagoon.

Why it matters

The city's official tourism portal calls Sant'Erasmo "l'Orto della Serenissima", the vegetable garden of the Republic, an island-garden of vines and market plots that has fed Venice for centuries and still does: the violet artichoke grown here is the island's signature crop, and its early spring heads, the castraure, are sought by restaurants across the lagoon. The island's natural landscape combines embankments, the tree-lined Via dei Forti, the tower at its southern tip and lagoon beach. The portal describes Sant'Erasmo as ciclabile, or cyclable, distinguishing it among the lagoon islands.

What to notice

The island's cultivation includes rows of artichokes, vineyards producing white wines and orchards hedged with tamarisk. Via dei Forti runs among remains of the nineteenth-century defensive system — ridotti and batteries built when the Lido port mouth was armed — to the Torre Massimiliana, a moat-ringed circular tower built by the Austrians in 1843–44 over a French fort of 1811–14. Named for Archduke Maximilian of Austria-Este, it was restored in 2004 and later used for exhibitions. A sandy beach known as il Baccan opens onto the Lido-facing waters, while barene mudflats fringe the island and support wading birds.

Context and history

The island's agricultural vocation is documented in the Republic's own era: land here was assigned to the monasteries of San Giorgio Maggiore and San Zaccaria and to patrician families, and the late-Renaissance writer Francesco Sansovino described it as rich in vegetable gardens and vineyards. Wine dominated early on, and older residents still call their vegetable fields "vineyards" — an echo of that balance. Sant'Erasmo shared the lagoon's military modernisation: the fort complex, of which the Torre Massimiliana is the surviving piece, guarded the harbour entrance alongside works connected by the road still called Via dei Forti, part of a system that also embraced the powder stores of the former Lazzaretto Nuovo across the channel. Farming survived the twentieth century and floods. The island's artichoke is a protected local product, and the young torbolino wine reflects its agricultural traditions.