BERLIN CALENDAR: MISTER LOVAH-LOVAH - CASANOVA IN BERLIN

Today in Berlin: 7 July, 1764

On this day in 1764 a 39-year-old Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, who at the time preferred to introduce himself as Chevalier de Seingalt, arrived in Berlin. The reasons for choosing Prussian capital as his destination depended on who was talking.

Portrait of Casanova by Francesco Narici and dated 1760 - four years before Casanova’s first visit to Berlin. The painting (oil on canvas) resurfaced in 1952 in Milan and was later sold to a Casanova scholar, Giuseppe Bignami.

According to Casanova’s own diary entries: "There was nothing further to attract me at Brunswick, and I thought of spending the summer at Berlin, which I concluded would be more amusing than a small provincial town." The tone would have suggested a leisure trip. A journey undertaken on a whim for nothing else but pleasure and self-gratification. It was everything but…