On the three-hundredth anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini dedicates to the celebrated Venetian an extensive exhibition and cultural project structured in two chapters. After Casanova and Venice, on view at Palazzo Cini in San Vio until 2 March 2026, the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore hosts Casanova and Europe. Opera in several acts, presented in collaboration with the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice for the exhibition design.
Drawing on materials from the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institutes, the exhibition reconstructs the historical and cultural context in which Casanova lived and acted: a Europe in ferment, animated by intellectual exchanges, political experiments, and artistic revolutions. Venice, the starting point of his tireless travels, was at the time a crossroads of ideas, poised between the decline of the Serenissima Republic and the dawn of modernity.
The exhibition offers a fresh perspective on eighteenth-century Europe, capturing its vitality and complexity — from the twilight of the Ancien Régime to the Napoleonic era, and the early stirrings of the industrial and liberal revolutions of the nineteenth century.