Due to the particular urban conformation of the city of Venice, in ancient times not all parish churches had their own cemetery, only a few had an external one, which over time often gave rise to specific toponyms such as “Campo Santo” or “Calle dei Morti”.
Some cemeteries were suppressed over time because of the clutter they could cause in the streets, for instance that of Saints Philip and James, or because plague victims’ corpses had been buried there and were no longer used.
But the birth of new monastic complexes often involved the occupation of the surrounding land for use as a cemetery area.
Campo Drio il Cimitero is one of them.
On 3 April 1348, a number of extraordinary and decisive measures were adopted in order to remedy the excessive accumulation of corpses in the city. To this end, the Maggior Consiglio proposed the Monasteries of San Leonardo in Fossa Mala and San Marco in Buccalama for the burial of the bodies, for all those who had no place of residence or by the will of relatives who did not want to have them buried in the city.
On this event, specifications were provided on the dimensions of the pits themselves; these had to be as deep as possible, at least five feet, in order to avoid unpleasant odours.
At this date islands began to be used for cemeteries outside the “Venetia urbs”.
Here is a small audio where a lady tells us that in the past people were buried in this field. The weather in Venice was not the best that day, as you can hear in the audio the wind was strong.
Translation:
“It is called ‘Drio il cimitero’ because dead people used to be buried here, in fact in Napolepone’s time, since Venice is a lagoon and there were no Graveyard, the campo itself was a cemetery”