Read Invisible Cities

You, the reader, keep starting novels that break off; Calvino's game.

An ageing writer, a Polish boy on the Lido and the cholera nobody mentions.

Chris Marker's letters from Japan and Guinea-Bissau; the essay film.

A city built on water with no cars — gondolas, Byzantine mosaics, and getting happily lost in the back canals

Glide the back canals by gondola — touristy, yes, but silent, ancient and unrepeatable anywhere else

Masked balls and Carnevale in the floating city — 18th-century costumes drifting through misty winter squares

The world's oldest film festival — red carpets on the Lido and the Golden Lion every late summer

Ferry to the Venetian lagoon’s rainbow island of fishermen’s houses and handmade lace