This site is all about how stories add spice to our ideas and feelings about the cities we love. Often we only know cities through stories. My favourites have long been London, Venice, and Florence and so I made this site, where I list and review all sorts of novels and films set in these three cities. Each city has some indulgent side pages too. These deal with the likes of The Cats of Venice, London Cakes and Lost Florence. I've also been casting my net wider of late and posting reports on my trips to other European cities, as a service to travellers who share my enthusiasm for art, churches, cakes, cats, and ice cream. Novels and stories feature here too. You'll find the cities visited listed on the handy Trips Menu To search within this site using Google, enter your search terms into the box as usual and then type in site:fictionalcities.co.uk In case you're curious, this is Me     My other sites are... TheChurchesofVenice.com & TheChurchesofFlorence.com These sites also have their own Facebook page... The Friends of Fictional Cities and the Churches of Venice and Florence Click on the link and Like the page for regular updates. Click here to send me an encouraging e-mail

click on the word NEWS above for more news (with photos!) click on the titles and trips to read all about them 19.7.2024 July this year is a month without trips, but it began with happy-making news. I had my  third colonoscopy on the 3rd, which was not fun. But this time they found nothing! They've not found anything bad in previous years, but the prospect of more uncomfortable treatments has hung over me for four years, and now it doesn't. This makes me very happy. And I'd forgotten that the new Donna Leon Brunetti novel was out this month too. I'm currently reading it, and it's even stopped raining for a whole day! 19.6.2024 Just back from Tuscany, following the Piero Trail with a tour group. Not my best trip of the year, but I was mighty smitten with Arezzo, which I'm thinking might be my new page project over on Churches of Florence. 1.6.2024 Just back from Ferrara and Bologna, my second trip of the year. Lots of churches had to be visited and photographed, and sometimes even found, for the city's pages over on The Churches of Venice, but I didn't stint on the breakfasts and gelato. Fruitful visits then, except with regard to my resolving to eat more cherries, as they have been so expensive in my own country in recent years. But this year in Italy an ordinary-sized pannier was usually around €12! 22.4 2024 Just back from the South Tyrol, my first trip of the year. It could've been warmer, but it couldn't have been more stimulating and fun. I must get to Germany more. 6.4 2024 I was prepared for some late temptation amongst the list of satellite Venice Biennale venues, but this year there seem to be absolutely no unusual church openings, and so this continues to look like a year that I won't visit Venice. But I'm off to the South Tyrol, and the city of Merano, next week. It's all looking very medieval and mountainous. 22.3.2024 I'm blowing the dust off my compass and camera as my guided tour of the South Tyrol is happening just the other side of Easter. Not having had my traditional first trip in March this year has resulted in very itchy feet and sundry gelato withdrawal symptoms. March has been a thing of rain and flu, but I had a good birthday. 14.2.2024 The sun is out, the sky is blue, and as me and the crocuses raise our heads into the cool air, thoughts turn to booking trips. I've been busy, so I am looking forward to trips to the South Tyrol, Ferrara & Bologna, Piero Country, Norfolk Churches, Burgundy and Delft. No trip to Venice planned, as yet, but it's always possible that some specially-opened Biennale satellite venues might tempt me. And there are gaps in the summer and September. 1.1.2024 As ever the new year brings news of Donna Leon's new Brunetti novel. It's called A Refiner's Fire, which is a very biblical departure from the usual cliché-phrase titles; and it's concerned, it seems, with teenage gang wars in Venice. Further novelty, verging on actual shock, is provided by it coming out in July, not March. As a wise man once said - amazeballs! old news here July 2024 Donna Leon A Refiner's Fire Venice June 2024 Piero Country  Trips Philip Gwynne Jones The Venetian Sanctuary Venice May 2024 Ferrara & Bologna Trips Ripley Venice TV April 2024 The South Tyrol Trips January 2024 Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini The Lover of no Fixed Abode Venice November 2023 A Haunting in Venice Venice films October 2023 Martin Gayford Venice: City of Pictures Lee Jackson Dickensland London September 2023 Donna Leon A Wandering Through Life Venice The Venetian Terraferma Trips August 2023 David Hewsom The Borgia Portrait Venice June and July 2023 Philip Gwynne Jones The Venetian Candidate Venice Churches of Suffolk Trips Lucca and Pisa Trips April & May 2023 Umbria Trips Verona & Venice Trips

Venice // Florence // London // Berlin Copyright © Jeff Cotton 1998-2024 26 years of reading and travelling