Giacomo Casanova’s life is inextricably linked to travel. Moving from place to place, crossing borders, getting to know new worlds were not a mere necessity for him, but a true way of life.
His travels tell the story of eighteenth-century Europe from a privileged perspective: that of someone living it from within, among courts, salons, cities and roads.
Venice is the starting point: the calli, the theaters, the first relationships.
From here Casanova moved on to Padua for studies, then Rome and Naples, where he came into contact with cultured and ecclesiastical circles.
Milan completes an initial map of travel that allows him to get to know Italy and, more importantly, men.
Paris welcomes and challenges him. In French salons Casanova gains attention, relationships and prestige, moving naturally in a cosmopolitan and competitive environment.
It is here that the journey turns into ambition. Success, however, is fragile: it only takes a little for the balance to break and force him to start again.
From Germany to Switzerland, from England to Russia, Casanova crosses borders, languages and cultures with the ease of a man who knows how to reinvent himself.
Courts, major cities and new patrons follow one another relentlessly.
The journey is no longer a choice, but a destiny.
In the later years of Casanova’s life, travel slows down and changes form. His travels to Central Europe mark a more reflective phase, marked by exile and distance.
It is here that Casanova begins to look back. The roads travelled become memory, and the journey continues on the written page.
Through “Histoire de ma vie,” Casanova transforms his travels into narrative. Cities are not mere backdrops, but living spaces, observed with a keen eye to social, political and human details.
Writing becomes the medium through which the journey continues through time, allowing the reader to travel across eighteenth-century Europe following his gaze.
