Edoardo Tiretta

Count Edoardo Tiretta (August 1731 – 15 March 1809 ), often anglicized to Edward Tiretta, was a Venetian nobleman, architect and landowner. Part of Giacomo Casanova's set in Paris, he moved to Calcutta in his forties, where he worked as a civil architect, building superintendent and land surveyor. He notably built Tiretta Bazaar, which became India's first Chinatown.

Early life Edoardo Tiretta was born in August 1731 in Trebaseleghe, in the modern-day Province of Padua, to a wealthy land-owning family. They owned a palace in Treviso, a villa in Montello, and numerous other properties in the countryside. He was educated as a mathematician and architect.

Casanova took Tiretta under his protection, offering him room and board; over the next few years, Tiretta would become his close friend and confidant. He shared Casanova's libertine lifestyle, seducing women for money; one of his many lovers nicknamed him "Count Six-Times" based on the number of times they had had sex in one night.

Life in Calcutta Following the loss of a favoured mistress, Tiretta decided to pursue his fortune in the East Indies. However, Tiretta got involved in a scandal and fled to Calcutta, then a prominent East India Company city and capital of the Bengal Presidency. The details of the scandal are not known, although Casanova refers to it as "a revolt at Batavia" and that "[Tiretta] had only escaped the gallows by flight." Civil Architect of Calcutta, Superintendent of Roads, He also became a land-owner and businessman, earning a degree of affluence and prominence in the city.

Diarist William Hickey left the following account of Tiretta: "By birth he was an Italian, but had spent considerable portion of his life in France and Germany... he had made no great proficiency in the English language... it being perfectly ridiculous to hear the strange mélange had made when speaking... a compound of English, French, Portuguese and Hindustani, interlarded with the most uncouth and outré oaths in each language." James Augustus Hicky, the founder of Hicky's Bengal Gazette, gave him the nickname of "Nosey Jargon" owing to his habit of prying into others' affairs.

Tiretta Bazaar

Around 1783, Tiretta was given permission to construct a "puckabazaar" in central Calcutta of an area comprising around nine bighas and eight cottahs of land, "with convenient shops, surrounded with a colonnade veranda": this is the eponymous Tiretta Bazaar. The bazaar became the nucleus of India's first Chinatown. However, Tiretta had a reversal of fortune over the next three years, verging on bankruptcy. He announced the sale of his bazaar as well as several other properties by lottery in the Calcutta Gazette on 2 December 1788. This "Tiretta's Lottery" consisted of six prizes; the bazaar was the first prize with a valuation of nearly two lakh sicca rupees. A gentleman by the name Charles Watson won the lottery for Tiretta Bazaar but opted to retain the old name. at the age of 59. She died at the age of 18 This cemetery was razed in 1977 and Angelique's tomb was lost, although several other tombs were relocated to the South Park Street Cemetery. The land is occupied by a school.

Retirement and death On 31 August 1802, Tiretta wrote to Lord Wellesley, Governor-General of India, requesting permission to retire.

In 1807, Tiretta returned to Treviso with his daughter; his youthful crime was either forgotten or overlooked.