Giacomo Casanova (Venice 1727 – Duchcov 1798), officially the son of Gaetano Casanova and Zanetta Farussi; however, his biological father was likely the patrician Michele Grimani; he would have loved to have been born into nobility (who wouldn't?).

Although he was not granted this good fortune, he knew how to seize the moment and react quickly when the nobleman Matteo Bragadin suffered a heart attack in his presence: it was only through Casanova's intervention that his life was saved.

As a result, Bragadin took the young man into his heart as a son: and opened the doors to the Venetian nobility for him. Since Giacomo was presumably a Freemason and also had a spectacular love affair with a likely noble nun, the government of the maritime republic kept a critical eye on him: and summoned him on the night of October 31 to November 1, 1756, to appear before the Inquisition court, where noble defendants in Venice were held accountable.

Casanova was sentenced to a long prison term, which he was forced to serve in the Lead Chambers, the prison cells located beneath the roof of the Doge's Palace, which was covered with lead. The Lead Chambers were, in a sense, Venice's "luxury prison cells," while the common people and the bourgeois prisoners were housed in the new prison building next to the Doge's Palace, accessible from it via the Bridge of Sighs.

However, since Casanova had no intention whatsoever of spending the best years of his life in prison, he organized - what no one would have thought possible - his spectacular escape from the Lead Chambers.