A Private Venetian Island With a Napoleonic Fort Is for Sale at €5.5 Million
A private island in the Venetian lagoon, featuring a restored Napoleonic-era fort, has gone on the market for €5.5 million, according to Italian press reports from August 25, 2026 (Milano Finanza; La Repubblica; La Stampa).
The island, called Crevan, covers roughly 5,700 square metres — slightly smaller than a standard football pitch — and sits a few minutes by boat from the well-known Venetian islands of Burano and Torcello. From Crevan, you can see across the lagoon to Venice itself, as well as to Murano and Burano (The Guardian; Lionard; La Stampa).
The fort on Crevan was built in 1806 by the French military, under Napoleon's rule, as a defensive outpost guarding the northern lagoon against the Austrian empire. Austria later expanded the fortification after taking control of the region. When Napoleon was defeated, Crevan came under Austrian rule in 1815, then passed to the Italian state in 1866 when the Veneto region joined the Kingdom of Italy. The island remained in military use through the First World War (La Repubblica; The Guardian).
After years of neglect, a private owner bought Crevan and restored its buildings for residential living. The Napoleonic fort — about 215 square metres — was fully renovated into a four-bedroom, three-bathroom villa with electricity, running water, heating, and air conditioning (The Guardian; Christie's International Real Estate; Vladi Private Islands). The grounds were landscaped with manicured lawns, fruit and vegetable gardens, and trees. The property also includes a private mooring along a small internal canal, a helipad, and two boat docks (The Guardian; Lionard).
Several property agencies are handling the listing, including Lionard Luxury Real Estate — whose founder and CEO Dimitri Corti is overseeing the sale — and Dimora Italian Real Estate, an affiliate of Christie's International. While the €5.5 million asking price has been publicly reported, the agencies say detailed pricing information is reserved for serious buyers only (The Guardian; Milano Finanza).
Crevan is not the only Venetian lagoon island currently for sale. Isola Santa Cristina, owned for decades by the heir to the Swarovski crystal empire, was listed at roughly €24 million in June. An octagonal island near the Venice Lido, originally built as a defensive post by the Republic of Venice in the 1500s, is also on the market (The Guardian).
The broader context here is that these islands are not just luxury properties but historically layered assets. Crevan's fort alone carries over a century of shifting sovereignty — French, Austrian, then Italian. The pattern of converting old military infrastructure into high-end homes is part of a wider trend across the lagoon, where defensive architecture from the Republic of Venice and the Napoleonic era has lasted longer as real estate than it ever did as fortification.
What is harder to judge is whether the cluster of listings points to a broader retreat from lagoon island ownership or simply a coincidence of individual sellers entering the market around the same time. The gap between Crevan's €5.5 million and Isola Santa Cristina's €24 million shows how widely valuations vary, driven by island size, proximity to central Venice, existing buildings, and ease of access. A fully renovated fort with modern utilities and direct water access sits at one end of that range; a larger island with a longer history of private ownership sits at the other. For any prospective buyer, the real cost goes well beyond the purchase price: maintaining infrastructure on islands exposed to the lagoon's harsh conditions, including acqua alta — the periodic high-water flooding that affects Venice — can be substantial even on elevated ground.
