FORTY DAYS: Quarantine: The Lazarettos of Dubrovnik are a reminder of the city’s foresight in combating infectious diseases centuries ago. “The word ‘quarantine’ has Italian roots: in an effort to protect coastal cities from the Black Death ravaging 14th-Century Europe, ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days (quaranta giorni) before landing, a practice that eventually became known as quarantine – derived from ‘quarantino’, the Italian word for a 40-day period.”