Giacomo Casanova most famous and representative citizen. Casanova was cared for by his grandmother Marzia Baldissera while his mother toured about Europe in the theater. His father died when he was eight. As a child, Casanova suffered nosebleeds, and his grandmother sought help from a witch: "Leaving the gondola, we enter a hovel, where we find an old woman sitting on a pallet, with a black cat in her arms and five or six others around her." Though the unguent applied was ineffective, Casanova was fascinated by the incantation. Perhaps to remedy the nosebleeds (a physician blamed the density of Venice's air),
Giacomo Devoto Giacomo Devoto Giacomo Devoto (19 July 1897 – 25 December 1974) was an Italian historical linguist and one of the greatest exponents of the twentieth century of the discipline. He was born in Genoa and died in Florence. In 1939 he founded with Bruno Migliorini the magazine Lingua Nostra. In January 1945, after the Liberation, along with Piero Calamandrei, Corrado Tumiati, Enzo Enriques Agnoletti and Paride Baccarini, he founded, in Florence, the "Associazione Federalisti Europei" (AFE, its acronym - in English Association of European Federalists), uniting afterwards integrating into the European Federalist Movement founded by Altiero Spinelli, which, between 1947-1948