Queer Places:
Duchcov Chateau, 419 01 Duchcov, Czechia
Zámek Duchcov Hrbitov
Duchcov, Okres Teplice, Ústecký (Usti nad Labem), Czech Republic
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798) was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of information about the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century.
As was common at the time, Casanova, depending on circumstances, used more or less fictitious names, such as baron or count of Farussi (the maiden name of his mother) or Chevalier de Seingalt. He often signed his works as "Jacques Casanova de Seingalt" after he began writing in French following his second exile from Venice.
He has become so famous for his often complicated and elaborate affairs with women that his name is now synonymous with "womanizer". He associated with European royalty, popes, and cardinals, along with the artistic figures Voltaire, Goethe, and Mozart. He spent his last years in the Dux Chateau (Bohemia) as a librarian in Count Waldstein's household, where he also wrote the story of his life.
The actor and biographer Ian Kelly followed Casanova's trail through archives in Prague, Moscow, St Petersburg, retracing the rake's wanderings between his departure from his native Venice in 1743 and his death in Bohemia in 1798.
Kelly also found evidence to confirm that a number of Casanova's sexual encounters had been with men, corroborating two references in Casanova's sensational memoir, The History of My Life.
"The modern concept of bisexuality, no less than of homosexuality, didn't really exist in the 18th century," Kelly says, " and the conception of sexual preference was on the whole a much more fluid affair.
"It seems likely that Casanova was a man who in sex, as in life, wanted to taste all the flavours on offer. That he didn't dwell on the same-sex experiences in his memoirs may have to do with the fact that he simply didn't enjoy them as much, but it's also true that he was keen to quash rumours afoot in Venice that his rise to prominence was courtesy of his having been the rent boy of his first patron
Matteo Giovanni Bragadin."
Casanova was also thrown out of the seminary in which had trained to become a priest for being discovered in bed with another male student.
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