Invisible Cities

It is not certain that Kublai Khan believes everything Marco Polo says about the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of Tartary listens with greater attention and curiosity than he shows to any other messenger or explorer. This is how Italo Calvino begins his compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco describes Armilla, which has nothing but water pipes rising vertically into empty space where the houses should be and spreading out horizontally where the floors should be, the spiderweb city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs—creating them all out of his imagination, perhaps, or perhaps recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take—Kublai Khan may wonder whether Marco Polo is making it all up or if he's just adding layers to Venice.