Giacomo Casanova is known worldwide as a ladies’ man, but he was much more: a priest, a spy and a writer. He now has a museum dedicated to him in Venice.Venice has a new attraction that’s sure to delight many tourists: the Casanova Museum and Experience.
Founder Carlo Parodi remembers noticing throngs of tourists wandering in search of a sign pointing out the house on Calle della Commedia where Giacomo Casanova was born on April 2, 1725. That gave him the idea to open a museum honoring the city’s famous son, the first of its kind, in the city’s grand Palazzo Pesaro Papafava.
The Venetian lover seduced many beautiful woman in palaces like the one that now houses an exhibition about him. He was, however, more than a notorious seducer of ladies.
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Playboy, priest and poet
The exhibition seeks to show Casanova as “the man beyond the myth.” It gives viewers a glimpse of eighteenth-century Venice and shows what makes Casanova an “eclectic and complex character, even today,” according to the museum’s curator.
Casanova, Parodi says, was a great thinker, writer and philosopher who has unjustly gone down in history as a great seducer of women. The museum shines a light on the many other aspects of his personality, professions and callings. After all, he was a poet, writer, diplomat and secret agent.
Although no one knows where Casanova’s is buried, his life philosophy remains alive today. As he once said: “I have loved women, even to madness, but I have always loved liberty better.”
