Casanova Museo

The Casanova Museum and Experience is a multimedia museum in Palazzo Pesaro Papafava dedicated to Giacomo Casanova, born in Venice in 1725.

Its argument is that the popular image of Casanova as a seducer has crowded out the rest of him. He was a writer, a librettist, a diplomat and a librarian, and his memoir Histoire de ma vie is one of the fullest first-hand accounts of 18th-century European society that survives -- valued by historians for its detail on travel, money, food and manners rather than for its romantic episodes.

The museum is presented through staged rooms and multimedia rather than a collection of objects, so it works as an introduction to his life and to Venice in its last decades as a republic rather than as a display of artefacts.

As a smaller, independently run museum, a visit here supports a less-visited corner of Venice's cultural offering compared with the city's more heavily trafficked sights.

The museum is housed in Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, a Gothic-style palace in Cannaregio, a short walk from the Grand Canal.

As a compact, multimedia-format museum rather than a large gallery, a visit typically takes under an hour, making it easy to combine with other sights in Cannaregio on the same day.