Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.21857/mjrl3ux449
Venetian lazarettos in Boka Kotorska
Ilija Lalošević
orcid.org/0000-0002-8947-6288
; Faculty of Architecture, University of Montenegro, Podgorica, Montenegro
Abstract
Lazarettos are a specific type of hospitals located outside the town centre – closer to or further from it; in ports or in their vicinity; or at the end of waterways. They used to serve for directing and halting infected or suspicious ships, their crews, passengers and cargo, and to put them under quarantine. In Boka Kotorska, the emergence of lazarettos was connected with the acceptance of the authority of Venetian Republic in 1420. In Kotor, quarantine was first mentioned in 1431, when a ship from Kotor survived the quarantine in front of Đurić, far from the town itself. The island of Stradioti near Tivat, which had earlier offered shelter to inhabitants of Kotor during epidemics, served the same purpose at the beginning of the 17th century.
Thanks to improving health measures and linking the function of lazarettos to trading in goods after conducting disinfections and control, the lazarettos gradually grew closer to towns, their ports and markets. The Kotor lazaretto was located very close to the port and the town walls. This was considered unfavourable according to Venetian sources dating from the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, and hence emphasised as argument in favour of closing the lazaretto in Kotor and opening one in Herceg-Novi instead, after its liberation from the Turks in 1687. The lazaretto was first built close to the entrance to the bay and the Herceg-Novi fortress, on the Topla location. The lazaretto that was built later, and somewhat further from the town, in Meljine, has been preserved in its original shape up to the present. The most recent works on the adaptation of this facility have to a major extent damaged its authenticity, and thereby also the features of a cultural asset.
Keywords
lazaretto; Venetian Republic; Boka Kotorska; Kotor; Herceg-Novi
Hrčak ID:
191115
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2017.
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