INVISIBLE CITIES (Italo Calvino)

BERSABEA

The image that tradition divulges is that of a city of solid gold, with silver bolts and diamond doors, a jeweled city, all inlaid and inlaid, as can result from the most laborious study applied to the most prized materials. Faithful to this belief, the inhabitants of Beersheba honor everything that the celestial city evokes: they accumulate noble metals and rare stones, they renounce ephemeral abandonment, they elaborate forms of decorative composition.

However, these inhabitants believe that another Beersheba exists underground, a receptacle for everything that they fear is despicable and unworthy, and their constant concern is to erase from outside Beersheba any link or resemblance to the lower twin. Instead of roofs, they imagine that in the lower city there are overturned garbage bins, from which cheese rinds, greased papers, dishwater, remains of  God, old bandages.

SMERALDINE

In Smeraldina, water city, a grid of canals and a grid of streets overlap and intersect. To go from one place to another you can always choose between the land route and the boat route, and as the shortest line between two points in Smeraldina is not a straight line but a zigzag that branches off in tortuous variations, the streets that they open to each passerby, not just two but many, and they increase even more for those who alternate between boat trips and land transfers  rme Thus the tedium of walking the same streets every day is saved to the inhabitants of Smeraldina. And that's not all: the network of passages is not laid out in a single stratum, but is a series of stairs, galleries, convex bridges, suspended streets. By combining sectors of the various elevated or surface routes, each inhabitant allows himself the distraction of a new itinerary to go to the same places every day.