Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Venetian nobles bothered with the formality of marriage, and the regularity of Venetian
annulments scandalised even visiting French courtiers.
PRINCE OF PLEASURE
Never was a hedonist born at a better time and in a more appropriate place: 18th-century Venice had retired from
the arduous business of running a maritime empire, and was well into its new career as the pleasure capital of
Europe when Giacomo Casanova (1725-98) arrived on the scene. He was abandoned as a young boy, and became
a gambler and rake on the make while studying law in Padua. He graduated by age 17 to take up a position with
the Church in Venice, but adventuring soon became Casanova's primary career, with minor sidelines in penning
love letters for cardinals, looking good in military uniform, and playing violin badly in an orchestra of drunkards.
His charm won him warm welcomes into the homes of wealthy patrons - and the beds of their wives, lovers and
daughters.
Venice was a licentious place, but some political limits still applied. Though Casanova's escapades may have
been dangerous to marriages, his dalliances with Free-masonry and banned books were considered nothing less
than a threat to the state. After an evening foursome with the French ambassador and a couple of nuns, Casanova
was arrested on the nebulous charge of 'outrages against religion' and dragged to the Piombi, the Palazzo Du-
cale's dreaded attic prison. Sentenced to five years in a sweltering, flea-infested cell, Casanova complained bit-
terly, and carved an escape hatch through the wooden floor - but just when he was ready to make his getaway, a
sympathetic warden had him moved to a more comfortable cell. Casanova soon devised plan B: he escaped
through the roof of his new cell, entered the palace, and casually breezed past the guards in the morning.
Casanova fled Venice to make his fortune in Paris and serve briefly as a French spy. But his extracurricular
habits caused him no end of trouble: he went broke in Germany, survived a duel in Poland, fathered and aban-
doned several children (possibly including a child by one of his daughters), and contracted venereal diseases in
England (despite occasional use of a linen condom prototype). Late in life, he returned to Venice as a celebrity,
and served the government as a spy - but he was exiled for publishing a satire of the nobility. He wound up as a
librarian in an isolated castle in Bohemia, where boredom drove him to finally write his memoirs. In the end, he
concluded, 'I can say I have lived'.
