This article elaborates a typology of the different types of readers in Calvino’s ‚Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore‘ (‚If on a winter’s night a traveller‘) to demonstrate how this novel fits the model of a supposedly ‘open’ work of art, according to Umberto Eco’s terminology. In this context, the different types of reader-figures presented in the text seem to invite identification, yet none appears to provide a mode of reading which could prove to be the ‘key’ to the novel. It is thus necessary to analyse the readers on a meta-level, in order to evaluate the multiple dynamics of their modes of reading. Arguably, the text only suggests openness, rather than genuinely creating it, by making its critical recipient track the different perspectives of readers without ever providing a real chance to engage with any one reader’s viewpoint.