[8] The islet lies 2 km (1.2 mi) to the southeast of Venice proper and west of the Lido and covers an area of 3 hectares (7.4 acres).

In 1717 San Lazzaro was ceded by the Republic of Venice to Mkhitar Sebastatsi, an Armenian Catholic monk, who established a monastery with his followers.

[11] Leone Paolini, a local nobleman, obtained the island as a gift from the Abbot Uberto di Sant'Ilario and built a church, initially dedicated to Pope Leo I.

[23] In April 1715, a group of twelve Armenian Catholic monks led by Mkhitar Sebastatsi (English: Mekhitar of Sebaste, Italian: Mechitar) arrived in Venice from Morea (the Peloponnese), following its invasion by the Ottoman Empire.

"[25] On September 8, 1717, on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, the Venetian Senate ceded San Lazzaro to Mkhitar and his companions, who agreed not to rename the island.

[33][18] The Mekhitarist congregation was left in peace, according to some sources, due to the intercession of Roustam Raza, Napoleon's Mamluk bodyguard of Armenian origin.

[11] Between 2002 and 2004, an extensive restoration of the monastery's structures was carried out by the Magistrato alle acque under the coordination of Consorzio Venezia Nuova, an agency of the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.

[11] In 2017 the 300th anniversary of San Lazzaro's Mekhitarist order was celebrated on the island and in Armenia,[41][42] including with a postage stamp[43] and academic conferences.

The church, the central courtyard, and all the rooms on the ground floor were flooded, while the library, gallery, manuscript repository, and archives were unharmed.

In 2015, it hosted the pavilion of Armenia during the 56th Venice Biennale,[51] which was dedicated to the Armenian Genocide centenary and won the Golden Lion award in the national participation category.

[58] The monastery currently contains a church with a bell tower, residential quarters, library, museums, picture gallery, manuscript repository, printing plant, sundry teaching and research facilities, gardens,[7] a bronze statue of Mkhitar erected by Antonio Baggio in 1962,[11] an Armenian genocide memorial erected in the 1960s,[59] and a 14th-century basalt khachkar (cross stone) donated by the Soviet Armenian government in 1987.

The three main windows of the altar's apse have stained glass which depict from left to right: Sahak Patriarch, Saint Lazarus, and Mesrop Mashtots.

Other significant paintings include Madonna with Child by Palma il Giovane (Jacopo Negretti), the baptism of king Tiridates III by St. Gregory the Illuminator by Hovhannes Patkerahan (1720), Assumption of Mary by Jacopo Bassano, Annunciation and Mother of Mercy by Matteo Cesa, the Flood by Leandro Bassano, Flight into Egypt by Marco Basaiti, Annunciation by Bernardo Strozzi, St. Thecla and Sts.

[64] Irish botanist Edith Blake wrote: "The garden in the centre of the cloisters was gay with flowers, and there was a calm, peaceful air of repose over the whole place.

[11][1] Armenian Weekly writer Levon Saryan noted that the manuscript collection of San Lazzaro consists of over 3,000 complete volumes and about 2,000 fragments.

A bas-relief in agate from the medieval Armenian capital of Ani and a curtain formerly hang at the monastery of Lim Island on Lake Van are also on display, along with several paintings by Russian-Armenian marine artist Ivan Aivazovsky, including depictions of Mount Ararat and Niagara Falls.

[85][86] Oriental and Egyptian publications and artifacts are held in what is called the "Lord Byron Room", because it is where he studied Armenian language and culture during his visit to San Lazzaro.

It is attributed to Namenkhet Amun, a priest at the Amon Temple in Karnak, and has been radiocarbon dated to 450–430 BC (late period of ancient Egypt),[87] following the international scientific mission led by Christian Tutundjian de Vartavan to study the mummy, as reported in 1995.

[90] The collection also includes Etruscan vases, Chinese antiques,[91] a princely Indian throne with ivory inlay work, and a rare papyrus in 12 segments in Pali of a Buddhist ritual, with bustrophedic writing in red lacquer on gold leaf brought from Madras by a Russian-Armenian archaeologist, who discovered it in a temple in 1830.

[11] Among the art works on display at the monastery corridors are charcoal drawings by Edgar Chahine, landscapes by Martiros Saryan, Mount Ararat by Gevorg Bashinjaghian, a marine painting by Charles Garabed Atamian and a collage by Sergei Parajanov (gifted by himself),[92][93] a triptych by Francesco Zugno depicting the baptism of King Tiridates III by Gregory the Illuminator, various paintings by Luigi Querena, Binding of Isaac by Francesco Hayez, and others.

[98] The publishing house printed books in dozens of languages, which included themes such as theology, history, linguistics, literature, natural sciences, and economics.

[99] Its expanded and improved edition, Նոր Բառգիրք Հայկազեան Լեզուի, Nor baṛgirkʻ haykazean lezui (New Dictionary of the Armenian Language, 1836–37), is considered a monumental achievement and remains unsurpassed.

He called it a "remarkable work of scholarship in its day and although as a tool of etymological research nearly a hundred and fifty years later it has obvious disadvantages, we should still be lost without it.

[118] American Protestant missionary Eli Smith noted in 1833 that the convent of San Lazzaro not only did not pursue the "denationalizing system of many of the Romish missions among the oriental churches," but also has done "more than all other Armenians together, to cultivate and enrich the literature of the nation.

"[119] Louisa Stuart Costello called the Armenian convent of San Lazzaro "a respectable pile, above the encircling waters, an enduring monument of successful perseverance in a good cause.

[124] Elizabeth Redgate writes that the developments in intellectual culture and scholarship in Russian Armenia and at the Mkhitarist monasteries of San Lazzaro and Vienna inspired an increased nationalism among Armenians in the 1880s.

[127] This view was expressed as early as 1877 when Charles Yriarte wrote that the Armenians "look with justice upon the island of San Lazzaro as the torch which shall one day illuminate Armenia, when the hour comes for her to live again in history and to take her place once more among free nations.

Mikael Nalbandian, a liberal and anti-clerical Russian-Armenian writer, wrote in the mid-19th century that the "enlightenment of our nation must proceed from the hands of execrable papist monks!

[36] Since the 19th century numerous notable individuals visited San Lazzaro, such as composers Jacques Offenbach,[150] Gioachino Rossini,[150] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky,[151] and Richard Wagner (1859),[152] writers Alfred de Musset and George Sand (1834),[153][154][155] Rudyard Kipling,[111] Marcel Proust (1900),[156] Ivan Turgenev,[151] Nikolai Gogol,[151] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,[2] English polymath John Ruskin (early 1850s),[157] and French historian Ernest Renan (1850).

[150] During the 19th century numerous monarchs visited the island, including Charles IV of Spain, Franz Joseph I of Austria, Umberto I of Italy, Charles I of Romania, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, Wilhelmina of the Netherlands,[150] Prince Napoléon Bonaparte,[158] Ludwig I of Bavaria, (1841),[159] Margherita of Savoy,[160] Maximilian I of Mexico,[160] Carlota of Mexico,[160] Edward VII, Prince of Wales and future British king (1861),[160] Napoleon III (1862),[160] Pedro II of Brazil (1871),[160] Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (1881),[160] Alexander I of Russia.