The National Archaeological Museum of the Venice Lagoon is located on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, a place of extraordinary historical value, located in the central lagoon of Venice , very close to the Lido, facing the San Marco basin. It preserves a monumental heritage of great interest and is a particularly fascinating place.

In 1423 it was chosen by the Senate of the Serenissima to establish - the first hospital in the world - a "hospital" for the treatment and isolation of plague patients. The island was enlarged several times, also by means of the surrounding shallow waters; in these areas, recent excavations have shown the presence of mass graves with thousands of burials.

Around the middle of the 19th century it was used as a military warehouse and some buildings were demolished; when the military function ended in 1965, for thirty years it was used as a municipal kennel. In recent years the island has undergone important interventions by the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage: in 2008 a considerable part of structural work was completed with the project to make it home to the " National Archaeological Museum of the Venice Lagoon " , where to reconstruct the evolution and transformations of the city of Venice from ancient times to today, presenting in a unified way the considerable materials recovered from thousands of archaeological researches.