The anniversary exhibition of Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976–2026) offers an immersive look at the making of one of the Maestro’s greatest masterpieces. Original documents, drawings, scripts, the director’s handwritten logbook, photographs from the shoot and film posters reveal a conflicted adaptation that casts the famous Venetian seducer as an anti-hero. In this sumptuous film, where dreams, the unconscious and secret references to the work of Dante Alighieri abound, the pictorial aspect of the film once again elevates Venice to its glorious status as a city of chimeras.

Thanks to the partnership with Reinhold Jaretzky Zauberbergfilm and documents from the making of Reinhhold Jaretzky’s film Giacomo Casanova: Much More Than a Don Juan, the exhibition offers a double portrait of the adventurer who became a legend in his own lifetime: Fellini’s free adaptation confronts the self-portrait that Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, patiently constructed and often invented in his monumental memoirs, entitled Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life).

The grand illusion is indeed the common theme linking two characters who share the same name but seem to be polar opposites. This dialogue between cinema and literature also incorporates music. Fellini’s Casanova is not only a grand dreamlike fresco, but also a vast musical composition by Nino Rota. As for the Venetian adventurer, it should be remembered that he collaborated with Lorenzo Da Ponte on the libretto for Mozart’s Don Juan.

The exhibition offers a journey through time and the arts, with a freedom that neither Fellini nor the Chevalier de Seingalt, travelling through Europe during the Age of Enlightenment, would have denied.