The first order of business for the new leaseholders of Poveglia, an island in the Venetian Lagoon, was decidedly unglamorous. They carefully picked their way through the brambles that colonized the land during its five decades of abandonment and collected garbage left behind by an unauthorized campfire party.
Then, members of the Poveglia for Everyone association gave a sound-bite-size synopsis of their 11-year battle to manage the island on the principal morning show of RAI, the national broadcaster: In Italy, that move was the on-air equivalent of planting a flag.
Poveglia was theirs, at least temporarily.
“We did it,” Patrizia Veclani, a member of the association, said with a note of pride while bobbing on a boat to the island. “Now we are entering a new phase to make Poveglia a functional part of the city.”
For these Venetians, the effort to reclaim the scraggly, uninhabited island is about something bigger than a real estate deal. It is a last stand of sorts as faceless conglomerates, wealthy foundations and the ultrarich snap up Venice’s finite real estate, pushing people with more modest financial means to the terraferma, as the mainland is known. In a city whose population in its historic center has shrunk to under 50,000 but that is habitually swarmed by tens of millions of tourists, the association aims to transform the island into a haven for people seeking a rare touch of wildness.
Tourists could go, but a rush seems unlikely, given all there is to see and do in Venice’s city center.
In Poveglia, by contrast, the best thing to do is almost nothing, said Fabio Boscolo, another member of the association. “It’s a magic place.”
In this case, magic might be in the eye of the beholder, at least at the moment. There is no running water or electricity on the island. A walk along the perimeter — 15 minutes at a leisurely pace — offers mostly brambles (now thick with blackberries) and invasive species like ivy and Ailanthus trees. Venice’s historic center is visible, but in the distance, with the vast lagoon in between.
Apart from butterflies, birds and swarms of hungry mosquitoes, the main sign of life on a recent trip was a rabbit hopping through the brush.
The quest to claim Poveglia began in 2014, when the state property agency put the island on the auction block, and a group of citizens — “tired of seeing Venice being sold off piecemeal” — banded together to stop it from being developed into the umpteenth luxury resort for rich visitors, Ms. Veclani said.
Though the association raised more than 450,000 euros in less than a month, the bid fell far short of what the agency considered to be a fair price for a 99-year lease. Fast-forward past a decade’s worth of legal battles, and last year a court determined that the association — backed by some 40 groups of local citizens — could manage one of Poveglia’s three islets on a six-year renewable lease. The association was given the wildest section, starting this month.
Depending on where in Venice one is traveling from, and at what speed, a boat ride to Poveglia usually takes from 10 to 30 minutes. The longer ride starts on the Giudecca island. On a recent morning, Sandro Caparelli, an urban planner turned boat chauffeur for the day, rattled off the fate of some of the small islands we sped by.
We passed Sacca Sessola, poetically renamed Island of the Roses after a JW Marriott luxury resort opened on the island 10 years ago. San Clemente, which once housed a female psychiatric hospital and later a cat sanctuary, has been turned into a luxury resort whose management was taken over this year by the Mandarin Oriental group. The island of Santo Spirito is up for sale.
“These are all exclusive islands,” said Fabrizia Zamarchi, the president of Poveglia for Everyone, which, she explained, means they mostly exclude Venice’s residents, creating a rift between the islands of the lagoon and the rest of the city. She said that reflected a mentality that puts clients first and locals second, turning Venice into a playground for tourists while ignoring the needs of those who live there.
That tension came to the forefront this year with the lavish, star-studded wedding celebrations of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, prompting days of protests as some of Venice’s left-leaning grass-roots groups did what they could to spoil the party.
The hope is that Poveglia will be the antidote to such displays.
The community group plans to build a dock to replace the rickety one that exists. Members also want to host rowing lessons and encourage people to visit the island for picnics. To keep it pristine, they have decided not to even add benches.
One challenge for the group is tamping down persistent rumors about the island. In recent years, Poveglia has gained a global renown as one of the most haunted places on earth, making it a favorite of teenage boys and men who post videos of themselves being spooked by ghosts they insist they can see.
One legend holds that a doctor at a mental hospital on the island committed suicide after performing heinous experiments on his patients (there was never a mental hospital there). Another claims that 160,000 plague victims are buried there, and that some of them had been burned alive.
“It’s all crap, all lies, there’s no historical basis” in Venetian history or folklore, according to Alberto Toso Fei, who has written books on Venetian ghost tales. He linked Poveglia’s haunted reputation to some recent American TV shows and called the stories “cosmic lies invented by creative American scriptwriters.”
In the late 18th century, Poveglia did become a place where plague victims were left after they became ill on ships, and some of them died there. Historical accounts note that Poveglia was just one of several islands where victims were isolated during various plagues that swept through Venice over several centuries. Mr. Toso Fei said that the total number of people who died from the plague on the island was closer to 20.
Mr. Caparelli, of the citizen’s group, said that “the ghost stories risked becoming an element to draw a certain kind of tourist here.”
Not only are the tales false, he added, but they “give a dark, negative, sad image to the island, while we prefer a lively and vibrant image.”
The quest to reinvent the island is being closely watched by researchers from the University of Verona who want to track the social, environmental and economic impact of regeneration projects involving state property managed by local organizations.
The association has grander plans. It is eyeing the other islets of Poveglia, in particular the section where a crumbling geriatric hospital and a towering centuries-old church steeple still stand. But renovations would require far more funds than the association currently has, Ms. Zamarchi, the president of Poveglia for Everyone, said.
On the boat trip back to the Giudecca, the association members were a bit more cramped than on the way out, sitting among the bags of garbage they had collected. Some had ideas about the island’s future, including of establishing small farms and allowing local boat makers to set up shop. These activities have struggled in a city that increasingly caters to tourists, said Maura Orlandini, another member of the association, but they are activities “that make a city a city.”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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