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 Venice's cats, London's 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.
Fiction features here too.
You'll find the trips 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

03.07.2022
June turned out a bit of a stop-at-home month, full of Ferrara-centric work on Churches of Venice, my new-found genealogy obsession, and medical appointments. But all is now clear, and my health is in the clear, for some English summer destinations, a Courtauld Summer School week, and two Italian trips in the Autumn. First up is Hereford and Worcester tomorrow, for some cathedral and cemetery action. Reading that Hereford Cathedral is having work done and is covered in scaffolding would've been dispiriting, had I not read it in a guidebook from 1858. Still, it's nice to know that one of the main banes of travel has not changed much in a hundred years. July also sees the publication of site-fave Philip Gwynne Jones's new novel The Angels of Venice. So, what with a clean bill of health, trips aplenty, and juicy reads, the future's looking bright.

21.05.2022
Back from my trip to Ferrara and Venice, and boy was it hot - the upper 20s°C. But lots of photos were taken, churches visited, and gelati and pastries scoffed in both cities. Only really the mask-wearing remains of the Covid measures, on public transport and some churches, although I was blessed with hand wash from a nun. Having been on three trips abroad and two in the UK so far this year I plan to stay at home now for a bit, probably until September/October. I'm looking at plenty of work to get my Ferrara church page presentable and my Venice pages freshened up, which I've already begun.

03.05.2022
This time next week I'll be packing for my trip to Ferrara and Venice, where I'll be selflessly devoting myself to photographing churches and eating gelato. It'll be my first trip to Venice, and first solo trip to Italy, since November 2019. In Venice I'll also be checking out the now-finished conversion of the ground-floor rooms at the Accademia to gallery space which, since August 2021, has included a new big room of church art of the 17th and 18th centuries. Not our favourite centuries, but still. The new display presents 63 works, many not previously on display for space reasons. There's a few rarely-open churches being used as Biennale satellite venues too, and temperatures are looking to reach around a comfortable 23°.

The need for the  personal locator form for entry into Italy ceased on the 1st of May and the NHS covid-jab proof is now only needed for entry into the country, not restaurants and galleries anymore. FFP2 masks are still compulsory on flights into Italy and on public transport there. A minor pain, and weird after the UK's relaxation of all rules, but not as bad as February.

05.04.2022
Just when you thought it was safe ... my guided trip to South Tyrol in June has just been cancelled, due to too-low numbers. It seems that not everyone thinks it's safe yet. The silver lining is that I now have a swathe of free weeks in June giving me scope to book my own destination(s) in Italy.

08.03.2022
Encouraged by the news that from the 1st of March entry to Italy no longer requires a pre-trip Covid test, just proof of vaccination and passenger locator form, I've booked a week in Ferrara and Venice in mid-May!

01.03.2022
I'm just back from Florence - my first trip to Italy since Venice in November 2019 and my first trip abroad since my Covid-cursed trip to (not) see the Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent in March 2020. So that’s two years of lockdowns, staycations and online courses, but no getting out of my own country. Rules have been relaxing very fast in England of late, but Italy was still not taking any chances.

old news here