The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- Feasting and Profanity at Carnival -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 14)

May be—but try not to spoil the ride, okay?

In a desperate attempt to find some trace of the city's decadent past, Lena and I are going to a Carnival ball.

As in the rest of Europe, the tradition dates from the Middle Ages, when the normal rules of society were upended for a week of feasting and profanity before the forty days of fasting and piety ahead of Easter.

In its current tourist-trap incarnation, though, 'the World-Famous Carnival of Venice' dates from 1979, having been resurrected after Mussolini's Fascists stamped it out.

Rather than the city's Renaissance heyday, the modern Carnival harks back to its Age of Decadence in the eighteenth century, when Casanova was one of numerous chancers trawling its canals for an easy lay and/or lunch ticket.

Venice had become the playground of Europe because it was politically impotent.

Foreign aristocrats could indulge their whims without having to worry about the consequences: what happened in Venice, stayed in Venice.

The Enlightenment had created the notion of high society—of seeing and being seen in public—but in Venice, even that was optional.

Between Carnival and the theatre season, Venetians spent roughly five months of the year promenading around in masks.

At a time when Paris had only three public theatres, Venice had thirteen—not to mention Europe's first public gambling establishment, plus dozens of private 'little houses' hidden around the city.

By the time the Venetian Republic fell to Napoleon in 1797, Venice had no fewer than 136 of these 'casinos.'

One of the last surviving casinos from Casanova's heyday... now an office
(Note the portrait from Pompeii, supposedly of Sappho)

The city was particularly popular with British high rollers, partly because their Protestant government frowned on them dallying in Rome but also because of the city's fame as a fleshpot.

Its very name lent itself to puns on 'Venus' and her venereal pleasures.

Long before Byron set up home there (Shelley complained about him haggling with parents for their daughters), Elizabeth I's tutor reported that Venice had 'more liberty to sin than I heard tell of in our noble City of London in years.'

Which was saying something.