MOTIFS PRESENT
ALL CITIES
* * *
INVISIBLE CITIES
a digital translation
"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had."
a digital translation
"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had."
MOTIFS PRESENT
ALL CITIES
Invisible Cities is one of the most beloved works of twentieth-century literature. Written by Italo Calvino and published in 1972, it is structured as a series of conversations between the aging Emperor Kublai Khan and the young Venetian explorer Marco Polo.
To entertain the Emperor, Marco Polo describes a series of 55 imaginary cities, each given a woman's name. These cities are grouped into thematic sections: Cities & Memory, Cities & Desire, Cities & Signs, Thin Cities, Trading Cities, Cities & Eyes, Cities & Names, Hidden Cities, and Continuous Cities.
However, Invisible Cities is not a novel in the traditional sense, as there is no plot or central character arc. Instead, the book shows us how we remember, what we long for, how we communicate, and whether we can ever truly know the complexities of the empires we build or the lives we live.
This website is a translation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities into the language of the web. It presents a curated selection of 25 cities from the original 55, one at a time. You move through the sequence forward or backward, or jump to any city from the menu. The interface recedes, letting Calvino's prose take center stage. To understand the bigger picture, each city links themes and motifs to other related cities, which you can browse and find patterns in.
