This site is all about how stories add spice to our ideas and feelings about our favorite cities. Sometimes we only know cities through stories. My favourites have long been London, Venice, and Florence and so I made this website, 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 things like The Cats of Venice, London Cakes and Lost Florence. I've also been casting my net wider recently, 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 these 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 15.11.2024 With the completion of my hat-trick of non-Italian trips, all full of very special art and tasty cakes, I face a winter indoors. My first trip in 2025 looks like being to Salzburg, but a return to Italy is scheduled for April, and a big exhibition devoted to Fra Angelico at the Strozzi in Florence later in 2025 is making a visit there then look essential. On the fame and glory front an article about Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna in this month's Burlington contains photos by me (see the NEWS page) - my first credit in that august publication. There was also the possibility that some of my photos might have found a supporting role in the 2026 Venice Biennale, but this is now not to be. Oh well. 6.9.2024 ‘So, Jeff,’ I hear you ask, ‘what’s occurring?’ Well, after my excellent trip to galleries in Berlin and Dresden I’ve been able to add some altarpiece info and photos to some churches in Venice and Florence. Also, I’ve been able to belatedly add fascinating facts about Stollen to my London Cakes page, which, as you may know, also deals with tasty imports. I was going to spend some days in Arezzo next week, with a view to the creating of a new page, but for various reasons, not the least the forecast of thunderstorms all week, I’ve postponed that jaunt. Trips remaining this year are Burgundy and Delft, both in October. As I type it’s dingy, cool and rainy in London, but the future’s bright! 29.7.2024 July continued to make me happy. The farcically incompetent and self-serving government we'd suffered for 14 years finally got the boot and having hope again is good. Last month a Courtauld summer school on illuminated manuscripts had included a visit to the Eton college library, where we'd been shown some lovely medieval books, and been allowed to turn the pages ourselves! We'd also got to visit the college chapel and admire their little-known grisaille medieval wall paintings. So imagine my joy at discovering, last week, for sale online, a handsome etching of the Eton College Chapel, You can see it on my News page. And I say again - it's all connected, as Eton college is a major source of the clowns that made up the aforementioned good-riddance government.   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. old news here September and October 2024 Delft Trips Burgundy Trips Tracy Chevalier The Glassmaker Venice August 2024 Casper David Friedrich Country Trips A.J. Martin The Night in Venice 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

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