Kolkata is a puddle, Havana a chair in a courtyard, Jerusalem a piece of paper, Hong Kong a bar overlooking the sea. Cities are a destiny, living, pulsating organisms—perhaps even thinking ones. Gabriele Romagnoli has visited many of them, scattered across nearly a hundred countries. Getting to know them doesn’t mean memorizing their layout word for word, but rather grasping their essence by clinging to an object, a glimpse, a scent, or an encounter. It is from this process of moving through fragments, surrendering to the apparent disorientation, that insights spring forth. The starting point is the porticoes of Bologna. There is no arrival, or end. Traveling light in search of happiness, perhaps of recognition. Like when you grasp the unspoken without a map, you suddenly see yourself reflected in another, wondering where you’ve been all this time, now that life has finally begun to shine. From Lima to Beirut, from Los Angeles to Jaipur, passing through Berlin, Cairo, Paris, Sarajevo, and Jerusalem, a great storyteller’s invitation to “maintain some connections, but no roots; to blend into everything rather than identify with anything; to reinvent one’s own story—and, indeed, one’s own geography.”