Persone mascherate in abito nero e maschera del medico della peste.

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Not a carnival costume but rather a symbol of death, used to remember how much pain and suffering the disease brought to Venice. The shape of the curved beak on the white mask quickly brings to mind the beak of a vulture, a bird notoriously associated with death.

The plague in Venice was a scourge that periodically afflicted and decimated the population over the centuries; due to the lack of medical knowledge the people relied on God, the Virgin and the Saints by building votive temples, while also trying to slow the epidemic by preventing the spread of infection. For this reaso

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