Timeline

Every major event, dated — with a label saying how sure we are.

1725 — Born in Venice documented

2 April: Giacomo Girolamo Casanova is born in Venice, Republic of Venice, to the actors Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova and Zanetta Farussi.

1733 — Father dies documented

Gaetano Casanova dies; the boy is placed under the care of relatives and, later, the patrician Michele Grimani — the man Casanova would hint, without proof, was his true father. disputed

1734–1742 — Padua documented

Schooled at Padua (boarding with Dr. Gozzi), then the University of Padua; doctorate in law, November 1742. Takes minor orders; expelled from the seminary of San Cipriano, Murano, 1741.

1743–1746 — Rome, the army, the violin memoirs

Secretary to Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome (dismissed); brief service as a Venetian officer in Corfu and Constantinople; violinist in the San Samuele theatre orchestra, Venice.

26 July 1755 — Arrested documented

Arrested in Venice by order of the Inquisitori di Stato; charges include affront to the holy religion, with magic, freemasonry, and libertinism in the dossier. Sentenced to five years in the Piombi, the cells under the lead roof of the Doge’s Palace.

Night of 31 Oct – 1 Nov 1756 — The escape documented

With the renegade priest Marino Balbi, Casanova breaks through the cell ceiling, crosses the palace roof, and descends the outer wall on a rope of knotted sheets. They flee by gondola to the mainland. Corroborated by Venetian prison records.

1757 — The lottery and the title documented

In Paris, styling himself “Chevalier de Seingalt” (a self-invented title, used from about this year), he proposes a state lottery to fund the École militaire. The Loterie de l’École militaire is authorized; as a receiver he grows rich.

1759–1760 — The Marquise d’Urfé affair memoirs

Occult and alchemical schemes with the wealthy widow Jeanne de Lascaris, Marquise d’Urfé; he flees France in 1760 as arrest threatens.

August 1760 — Voltaire at Ferney memoirs

Visits Voltaire at Ferney; days of debate on religion and literature. The account rests on Casanova’s memoirs.

1763 — London memoirs

London sojourn, including the ruinous affair with the courtesan Marie Charpillon.

1764 — Frederick the Great memoirs

Audience with Frederick II at Sans-Souci.

1764–1765 — Russia memoirs

St. Petersburg and the court of Catherine the Great; proposes calendar reform — not adopted.

1767–1768 — Spain memoirs

Madrid; briefly imprisoned, then expelled from Spain (1768).

1774 — Pardon and return to Venice documented

After eighteen years of exile, pardoned; returns to Venice, where he serves at times as a confidential informant for the Inquisitori di Stato.

1782–1783 — Expelled again documented

A libel quarrel drives him from Venice once more; he leaves in January 1783.

1785 — Librarian at Dux documented

Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein appoints him librarian at the château of Dux (Duchcov), Bohemia.

1786–1788 — The Dux writings documented

Soliloque d’un penseur (1786); Histoire de ma fuite (Leipzig, 1788); the five-volume utopian novel Icosameron (Prague, 1788), whose frontispiece is Johann Berka’s engraving of Casanova drawn from life in March 1788.

1789–1798 — Writing the memoirs documented

Composes Histoire de ma vie — about 3,700 manuscript pages. The narrative breaks off in 1774 despite the title’s promise of “until the year 1797.”

1797 — The Republic falls documented

The Republic of Venice is dissolved (Treaty of Campo Formio); Casanova’s native state ceases to exist months before his death.

4 June 1798 — Death at Dux documented

Dies at Dux, aged 73. Buried there; the grave is unmarked and its exact location is uncertain.

Source notes

• Chronology follows the Pléiade Histoire de ma vie (2015, ed. Gérard Lahouati and Marie-Françoise Luna) and the BnF “Fonds Casanova” documentation.
• The arrest, sentence, and escape dates are corroborated by Venetian archives; the remaining itinerary is primarily Casanova’s own testimony, checked where possible by Rives Childs and later editors.