Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is almost impossible to truly classify. It consists of 55 different descriptions of amazingly fictive cities interspersed with dialogue between the traveler Marco Polo and the wearied ruler Kublai Khan. These 55 sections are divided into various categories such as: Continuous Cities, Cities and Memory, or Hidden Cities. Each description is more fantastic than the last and over time the pieces accumulate into an atlas of the imagined and the possible. Cities are organized around ideas and attitudes. Each city in the book is a mapping of the imagination of “what if” that explores the concept of a city organized around a simple concept taken to a unifying conclusion. The descriptions of the cities illustrate the duel of ideas and attitudes going on between Polo and Khan in the work.