The Last Geniuses of Venice: A Casanova, Vivaldi and Tiepolo Walk

Venice has always been a city of performance – its canals, masks, and carnival culture producing some of history's most vivid characters. On this walking tour, you'll follow the intertwined lives of three 18th-century giants: seducer and memoirist Giacomo Casanova, composer Antonio Vivaldi, and painter Giambattista Tiepolo. You'll also discover how their city – decadent, cosmopolitan, and slowly losing its independence – shaped everything they created.

The tour starts at the Ponte dell'Accademia, with the Baroque dome of Santa Maria della Salute floating on the water ahead. You'll wind through the streets where Casanova was born, past the site of the world's first public casino on Calle del Ridotto, and through Campo Santo Stefano, where gossip and intrigue were daily currency. Along the way, you'll stop at Teatro La Fenice – rebuilt twice after devastating fires – where Verdi's Rigoletto and La Traviata both premiered, and where Maria Callas launched her international career.

The tour continues through the Castello district to the Church of San Giovanni in Bragora, where Vivaldi was baptised in 1678, and the Church of the Pietà, where he spent decades composing for abandoned girls known as the Daughters of the Choir. You'll also pass the birthplace of Tiepolo, the last great Venetian painter, whose luminous ceilings still adorn palaces and churches across the city. The tour ends at house number 2311 on Calle di San Domenico, where a modest plaque marks the spot where Tiepolo was born in 1696.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how Casanova escaped from the Piombi prison in the Doge's Palace – and why some historians think he simply bribed a guard
• Visit the Church of Santa Maria del Giglio, whose Baroque façade is decorated with city maps rather than saints
• Explore the Arsenale, the medieval shipyard where Venice built entire galleys in a single day
• Learn how Vivaldi's manuscripts disappeared for 200 years before being discovered by chance in a Piedmontese monastery
• See the leaning bell tower of San Giorgio dei Greci, built by Greek refugees after the fall of Constantinople
• Stop at Caffè Florian, open since 1720 and still the only café in Venice that admitted women in Casanova's time

This tour reveals a Venice far richer than its famous skyline – a city of ambition, scandal, and genius hiding in plain sight.