Con il favore della notte. I pleasure garden e la città sensuale

Pleasure gardens are a peculiar kind of urban gardens, widespread in major European cities between the 17th and 19th centuries. Fenced off, they were managed by entrepreneurs for profit. An entrance fee was charged, even for selecting the clientele, nevertheless they had a dubious reputation. Together art galleries, venues for concerts, theatre, banquets, masquerade balls, and fireworks, these gardens were not content with entertainment (i.e. leisure garden), but demanded pleasure, taking part into the new urban values of the time, between hedonism, profit, and Enlightenment culture. The encounter between bodies, woods, and the night made them different from any other urban place: they were mainly a summer and nocturnal phenomenon in cities that were still predominantly dark. Unlike any other park, they opened the gates at dusk, displaying their glittering casket of lights and making the social order falter, giving the chance to indulge in exciting transgressions. Their very significance is in the contest between light and darkness and their literal and metaphorical associations with illusion, exposure, and concealment, embodying utopian tensions, such as the mixing of social classes, or desires, such as promiscuity and excess.