PIN Giacomo Casanova’ Lodgings

Where the legendary lover laid his head

Born in Venice in 1725, Casanova was the eldest son of two Venetian actors, and (so he tells us) was a highly precocious, handsome and intelligent child. He went to the University of Padua at the age of twelve to study law, and graduated at the age of seventeen. Destined for a career in the Church, Casanova quickly realized that he found and all kinds of work boring. Instead, he decided to cultivate what he saw as his true vocation – the art of seduction.



For Casanova as for many educated eighteenth-century Londoners, sex was an important part of a balanced and healthy lifestyle, a way of exercising animal passions and sensual appetites. He came to London hoping to persuade state officials to let him run a national lottery, and had an audience with King George III. After a turbulent encounter with Teresa Imer, a childhood friend and the mother of his daughter, in her mansion on Soho Square Casanova took grand apartments on Pall Mall, moving to Greek Street the following year in pursuit of the French-born courtesan Marianne de Charpillon. His brief stay in London was curtailed following several brushes with the law after running up considerable debt and a severe dose of venereal disease.