Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities is a book by Italo Calvino that sets out to explore the meaning and symbols of cities that as the title indicates, exist on another level of perception, via interpretation of symbols, or signs.

The book is an exploration of imagination and the imaginable as the main narrator, Marco Polo, explores the vast Mongol Empire under the commission of Kublai Khan. Yet the cities described are not limited to, or even based on, those in the Mongol Empire (in fact, most of which Marco Polo has actually written in his memoir is contested by historians) but those that exist in our minds and arguably in our visible world: for example, cities that constantly re-buy all of their belongings and throw out the old everyday.

See also: Structuralism, Roland Barthes

External Links

• Excerpts Cities & Eyes 1 (http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/calvaldrada.html)
• Excerpts Cities & Signs 5 (http://www.drizzle.com/~ash/9901/imagined/calvino.html)