Venice tour: Casanova’s tale of passion

A fascinating self-guided audio walking tour of Venice with credible & original stories written by top local professionals. Take your tour now & enjoy it instantly on your smartphone device. 

Young Casanova, and his almost incredible adventures, serve as an exciting stepping stone for an introduction to the real Venice, away from the crowded tourist sites. The digital tour Young Casanova: a Venetian tale of passion invites us to lose ourselves in the canals and squares of Venice in the company of actors, nuns, and penniless aristocrats.

The life of young Giacomo Casanova turns Venice into a giant board game, where the most famous lover of all time played an unparalleled game of passion and pleasure, with hundreds of female and male co-players. Traces of his life survive everywhere, making him the most startlingly attractive tour guide of Venice behind the carnival masks.

The tour follows Casanova from his birth to his disastrous encounter with the Venetian authorities that resulted in his exile from his native city for two decades. His early life was centered around Campo San Samuele, only a short walking distance from Piazza San Marco and yet almost a whole world apart. It was here that Casanova’s father set up his home after marrying Zanetta, a fiery local beauty and actress. Her relationship with her eldest son was difficult so Giacomo came to depend on his grandmother. Her house still stands, a silent witness to the estrangement between mother and son.

Casanova is mostly famous for his love escapades. There are many sites all around Venice still marked by his presence and exploits. Palazzo Malipiero witnessed his first naughty adventures with local enchantresses. The Church of San Samuele became his playground when as a stunningly beautiful young priest he was immensely pleased to read the countless love notes sent to him by his female parishioners. Palazzo Bragadin served as his residence for three years, a period during which Casanova enjoyed a careless existence as a wealthy and empowered young man with a striking appearance, a resolute gambler, a spendthrift, a great talker with a sharp tongue, lacking all modesty, fearless and a pursuer of pretty women.

And, of course, no tour of Venice would be complete without a stop at the Palazzo Ducale and its famous Lead Prison. Casanova brought upon himself the wrath of the Venetian authorities with his bizarre and incredible liaison with the French ambassador and a handful of nuns. There was usually no escape from the famous Leads but Casanova managed to find a way out in the most extraordinary fashion.