AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Venice, Italy, has been a city long filled with tourists, and global investment has made the city of canals feel less like home for many locals. But last summer, a citizens' group won a rare exception involving one of the islands in the Venice lagoon, an agreement that allows part of it to be turned into a green space, at least for a few years. Megan Williams has the story.
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MEGAN WILLIAMS: It's early Sunday morning on Poveglia. Volunteers in jeans and T-shirts are clipping back thorny brambles and driving shovels into the ground to plant oak and nettle trees.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
WILLIAMS: For now, this abandoned island on the Venice lagoon is more wilderness than park, with ruined buildings, tall grass and muddy paths. Schoolteacher Filippo Facco (ph) says that's exactly why it matters.
FILIPPO FACCO: Planting trees is something important. And in Venice, in particular, is very important because most of the surfaces are disappearing, the natural landscape. Humans are building more and more, so it is important to give the nature back its space.
WILLIAMS: Venice is a city of stone and water, where public green space is rare. Homes, palazzos, former public buildings and even islands have been snapped up by investors, hotel chains and private owners. Poveglia was almost one of them.
PATRIZIA VECLANI: (Non-English language spoken).
WILLIAMS: Community organizer Patrizia Veclani says that in 2014, she and friends were at a cafe on nearby Giudecca Island, reading the local paper, when they spotted a tiny notice. The island with the bell tower in the distance, the one they sometimes rode to, was being put up for auction by the Italian state.
VECLANI: (Non-English language spoken).
WILLIAMS: Veclani and friends decided to create Poveglia per Tutti - Poveglia for Everyone. Within months, locals donated hundreds of thousands of dollars - still not enough to buy the entire island. But after years of public lobbying, today, the north part of the island is in their hands, with the rest still owned by the state.
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WILLIAMS: Electrical engineer Fabio Boscolo (ph) grew up on Giudecca, one of the more than a hundred small islands that dot the Venice lagoon. In past centuries, some were used to isolate people infected with the plague, including Poveglia, sparking lurid ghost stories about the island. But for Boscolo, as a kid, it was a magical place to discover, like one of the other islands he now points to across the water.
FABIO BOSCOLO: It was an hospital. Now is a luxury hotel. Theoretically, you can get in the island, but actually, it's quite difficult because you can arrive with the boat, but you cannot park the boat, for example.
WILLIAMS: Boscolo says Poveglia still feels open, rough and alive, not a polished attraction in a city overrun with tourists, where many locals have been priced out.
BOSCOLO: 'Cause I really like to stay in the lagoon. I like rowing and stay in lagoon doing everything was connected with this environment. And Poveglia is another way to enjoy the place where I belong.
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: (Non-English language spoken).
WILLIAMS: Under the trees, volunteers gather around Luca Mamprin (ph), a European tree technician, helping assess which trees are healthy, which need care and where paths can safely go.
LUCA MAMPRIN: We are making a map. This job is a cartographical job. We need to describe the risk assessment in this island for the trees.
WILLIAMS: Mamprin says the challenge is respecting Poveglia's wild conditions, but keeping it safe enough for school groups, walks and community events. The project to transform Poveglia will last until 2031. After that, the future is uncertain, with the pressure of private money never far away. For now, though, Poveglia belongs to the people here who spend Sunday mornings cutting brambles, planting trees and enjoying being in this rare, natural Venetian space. In a city shaped by water and increasingly by global capital, this small island is still something unusual - a piece of Venice held in common.
For NPR News, I'm Megan Williams in Venice. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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