Sex in the city: courtesans, public brothels, and forbidden acts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 at 18:00

Here we focus on three Renaissance cities: Venice, Rome, and Florence. As a port town, the sex trade flourished in Venice; Rome, also, with its large unattached male population was famous for prostitution of both sexes; while the city of Florence decided to increase its revenues by taxing prostitution and opening a municipal bordello. We will examine aspects of the sex trade in these cities, from poetic compositions of the courtesan Veronica Franco to Pietro Aretino’s scabrous critiques of these women’s activities. Moreover, Florence’s Office of the Night, with its accusations of sodomy and cross-dressing is a rich source of information for what was going on in the city’s shadowy alleys and backstreets. Further, we will consider the sermons of Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola on various types of sexual transgression, confessors’ manuals that address various illicit activities in the bedroom, as well as official investigations of sexual misbehavior behind convent walls.