AGLAURA, a city of unknown location.

Little can be said about Aglaura beyond the things its own inhabitants have always repeated: an array of proverbial virtues and of equally proverbial faults, a few eccentricities, some punctilious regard for rules. Ancient observers, whom there is no reason not to presume truthful, attributed to Aglaura its enduring assortment of qualities, surely comparing them to those of the other cities of their times.

Perhaps neither the Aglaura that is reported nor the Aglaura that is visible has greatly changed since then, but what was bizarre has become usual, what seemed normal is now an oddity, and virtues and faults have lost merit or honour in a different code of virtues and faults. In this sense, nothing said of Aglaura is true, and yet these accounts create a solid and compact image of a city, whereas the haphazard opinions which might be inferred from living there have less substance. This is the result: the city that they speak of has much of what is needed to exist, whereas the city that exists on its site, exists less.

Today Aglaura is a colourless city, without character, planted at random. But this is not entirely true, either: at certain hours, in certain places along the street, travellers see before them the hint of something unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent; they would like to say what it is, but everything previously said of Aglaura imprisons their words and obliges them to repeat rather than say something new.

Therefore, the inhabitants still believe they live in an Aglaura which grows only with the name Aglaura and they do not notice the Aglaura that grows on the ground. Even experienced travellers, who would like to keep the two cities distinct in their memories, can speak only of the one, because the recollection of the other, in the lack of words to fix it, has been lost.

(Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili, Turin, 1972)

Text from The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, updated and expanded edition by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi (Harcourt Brace & Company, 2000)

I worked up a few entries. Like, three, at the point of posting this - this one and two more. I’d work out more but I have one more hour before I need to leave the computer, so I cannot.

Aglaura is a colourless city without character, long since abandoned some miles west of Rio de Janeiro. Once upon a time, it moved with the people who lived in it, but that time has long since gone, and it’s people has died out or abandoned it. While the exact cause of its abandonment is uncertain due to the city itself causing conflicting stories about those events, the magic in the city still lingers.

At certain hours, mainly at dawn and sunset but also at a few other select hours of each day, along certain streets, those whose air is especially heavy with magic, travelers can see the hint of something unmistakable, rare, and magnificent, but no one can speak of what they see, nor can they speak any truths about the city. The city is trying to recreate it’s glory days with the magic that is keeping it borderline sentient, at the hours when its magic is at it’s strongest.

Aglaura (Cities and Names 1)

“So if I wished to describe Aglaura to you, sticking to what I personally saw and experienced, I should have to tell you that it is a colorless city, without character, planted there at random. But this would not be true either: at certain hours, in certain places along the street, you see opening before you the hint of something unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent; you would like to say what it is, but everything previously said of Aglaura imprisons your words and obliges you to repeat them than say.