A peaceful escape from bustling Venice, San Lazzaro is a popular day trip destination and features a church, bell tower, library, Armenian and Oriental museums, printing plant, gardens, and residential quarters. Tour the monastery grounds and explore a collection of artifacts from Ancient Egypt and India, including a well-preserved mummy of an Egyptian priest and a 15th-century Indian throne.
San Lazzaro degli Armeni is most often visited via boat tours of the Venetian Islands. Private and small-group boat tours of the Venetian Lagoon may also pass by the small islands of San Clemente and San Servolo, and the larger islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello.
Since the monastery is still an active place of worship, you can only explore on a guided tour. These are offered once daily in a variety of languages.
Tours are run by a monk of the Mekhitarist Order.
The onsite gift shop sells island-made rose petal jam, which makes for a great souvenir.
San Lazzaro degli Armeni is located just west of the island of Lido, 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) southeast of Venice. The easiest way to reach San Lazzaro degli Armeni is on a guided boat tour of the Venetian Lagoon, or via vaporetto (water bus) Line 20 from the San Zaccaria Pier near St. Mark’s Square in Venice.
Guided tours of the Mekhitarist monastery of San Lazzaro run just once a day at 3:25pm. Reservations are not required for the tour, but it is recommended to check tour times in advance. San Lazzaro degli Armeni is less visited than the more popular islands of Lido, Burano, and Murano so it is the perfect spot to escape crowds at any time of year.
Following invasion by the Ottoman empire, several Armenian Catholic monks fled to Venice in 1715 and were gifted the island of San Lazzaro from the Venetian Senate in 1717. The Mekhitarist Order then began a multilingual printing press, translating various literary works and medieval transcripts into Armenian.
