As mentioned in our previous blogpost, there are quite a few number of islands you can go within Venice.

Burano it is, a little island full of brightly-colored houses and in fact,

rich in history.

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A colorful island well-known for producing lace, quite a few legends were told amongst people but let’s talk about those that impressed me!

So, the origins of Venetian lace are lost to history. According to legend, a love-struck sailor gave a Venetian girl an aquatic plant called trina delle sirene — mermaid’s lace. The girl was so taken with it that she immortalized its beautiful form with fine threads, and the art of lacemaking was born. Over several centuries, Venetian lacemakers produced wonders of breathtaking intricacy, extremely fine pieces stitched together with gossamer-fine threads. For three hundred years their work boasted the most prestigious lace pedigree in Italy, if not in the world.

And this, this the reason why you can see lace products everywhere on Burano!

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For the colorful houses, as a fishing community, Venice Lagoon’s thick fog made navigating quite a challenging task for the fishermen of Burano. To find their way back to town more easily, their wives started painting the houses in bright colors so that they stood out in the mist and therefore could enabling the fishermen to find their houses without too much hustle.

However, another one goes a bit shady. Back in the days, Black Death occurred and had spanned across Europe.  No mercy was shown to Italy where Burano was one of the victims.

Great number of people were infected and died from the plague, which I know sound similar to what happened over the past few years.  People were freaked out and soon, the health ones started isolating themselves.  Once again yes it sounds very similar.  Hence, people started to paint their houses as a way to tell others that they are not infected and has performed deep cleaning.

As time passes, cure was found and the plague had gone, leaving only the brightly-colored houses on the island to tell its history and here we are, as a witness.

Nowadays, Burano’s houses with bright colors that almost look photoshopped are required to repaint it every two years. Each house is with a different color from its neighbors and in fact, anyone that wants to paint their place needs to get approval from the local community government first.

To fully explore the island and get yourself some good snaps, three hours at max would be good enough.  There are quite a few spots and let’s have a look at some of the pictures!

All the spots are instagrammable, as you can see

But to be very frank, Burano has become less mysterious the moment ever since it was listed as one of the prettiest islands on earth as it means there will be more and more tourists. Tho, it’s still breathtaking and well-worth a visit. Just make sure you respect the island and keep everything cool when you visit there!

Hope you enjoyed this blog and, yes, see you in our next trip to Rome!