An abandoned 'island of ghosts ' saw the deaths of 160,000 people, and housed an asylum where patients were tortured.
Poveglia Island, off the coast of Venice and Lido, Italy, is now closed to all but the hardiest dark tourists who either sneak on or get special permission.
Set foot on the island and you would be forgiven for thinking that you're in the northern Italy version of paradise.
Blue waters lap on the beaches and lush foliage wrap around the base of the central church spire.
Walk a little further inland and you'll discover that the pleasing medieval roof tops are falling down into hospital rooms that have long since been abandoned.
For the past 54 years Poveglia and the psychiatric hospital that sat on it have been closed, its buildings allowed to seep and crack as the natural world slowly reclaims it.
Those of a supernatural inclination may be glad to see the human footprint turn to dust, as within those walls are the memories of much anguish and misery.
For decades scores of people were dragged kicking and screaming to the island if they showed even the slightest symptoms of the Black Death.
The 18-acre plot was also used as a mass burial ground where some 160,000 victims are thought to have been burned to stop the spread of the disease.
It has been said that even to this day human ash from these cremations make up more than 50 per cent of the islands soil.
Once the threat of the Black Death had passed over Europe, Poveglia found a new lease of life as the location of an expansive psychiatric hospital, or 'asilo' as it would've been known in the early 1900s.
Local legend records that one doctor at the hospital tortured and killed many of his patients, butchering them horribly.
He is said to have experimented on those in his care with crude lobotomies, with tools he used such as hand drills still in the rooms to this day.
According to various reports, most recently by the Travel Channel, the doctor jumped from the bell tower in the 1930s after he said he had been driven mad by ghosts.
Decades later, nearby residents claimed to still hear the bell despite the fact that it had been removed.
One pair of brave British urban explorers previously ventured onto the island to offer a sneak peek, and spare us a visit.
Matt Nadin, 40, and Andy Thompson, 54, shared extraordinary footage after sneaking into the most remote parts of the island.
Their video shows the rotting abandoned buildings and vast mass burial ground and items, including old beds and baths, as well as several large containers which look like they may have been used to burn bodies.
Matt, a salesman from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, posted the footage to his YouTube channel, Finders Beepers History Seekers, where he can often be found exploring abandoned and historic places of interest with Andy.
He said: "It was really, really eerie. You could tell even the taxi driver was scared, not just of the police but of the place itself, he couldn't get away quick enough.
"The island is so full of dark, dark history, a hell of a lot of people died there and you really get a sense of the horrors that took place there while you're walking around.
"They burnt all the bodies and left them where they lay. The island has never really been cleared properly or anything so everything has just been left.
"Later on, when it was turned into an asylum, because people were shoved there out of the way of prying eyes, they started to do experiments on them, horrible, horrible stuff."
