During the whole of the eighteenth century but more intensely in the second half and at the close of the century, the city of Venice was considered an integral part of the itinerary of European Grand Tour travellers. This was due to the letters and travel journals sent home which described Venetian society as a fascinating ‘new world’ caught between living in the contemplation of memories of its glorious past and an increasingly contrasted atmosphere of disillusioned hedonism. To many travellers Venice appeared as ‘retired’ in its stubborn attempt to preserve the structure of its aristocratic Republic as untouched by any modern view that could represent (and threaten) a cultural fracture with the past, proposing instead an image of a city where the mechanisms of self-display, entertainment and luxury were the norm. During the Enlightenment the Venetian theatrical season, which opened in October and ended with the Carnival, was supported by seven public theatres where dramatists such as Carlo Goldoni (1707–93) initiated a complete structural reformation of Italian drama. The cultural practices related to the Carnival season – masquerades, music, melodramas, balls, provocative conduct and liberty – attracted foreign travellers yet, at the same time, seemed to unveil a sumptuous though indifferent and inexorable decay of the city.