Until Napoleon established a city cemetery on Isola di San Michele, Venetians had been buried in parish plots across town – not the most salubrious solution, as Napoleon’s inspectors realised. Today, goths, incorrigible romantics and music-lovers pause here to pay respects to Ezra Pound, Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky. Architecture buffs stop by to see the Renaissance Chiesa di San Michele in Isola , begun by Codussi in 1469, and the ongoing cemetery extension by David Chipperfield Architects (scheduled for completion in 2016), including the recently completed Courtyard of the Four Evangelists – a sunken bunker, with a concrete colonnade and basalt-clad walls engraved with the Gospels.
