This site is all about how stories add spice to our ideas and feelings about our favourite 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. There's also a page for reviews of Related Works 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 6.9.2025 Next Wednesday I'm off to Venice, for 6 days, on a guided trip concentrating on architecture. Aside from the expected churches we'll also be visiting some Carlo Scarpa buildings and the Fenice. And the churches include Santa Maria dei Derelitti, which I've never gotten inside, and an evening visit to San Marco. Can't wait! 21.8.2025 When I started this website I naively hoped that as it became established my letterbox would see daily flappings and droppings of gems of fiction onto my mat. This never happened - I still have to ask, and often receive, and hear, nothing. So I was happy when a recent flapping produced a hardback of John Banville's Venetian Vespers. due out on the 25th of September. A Venice-set novel by a famous author, and one that you're a fan of, is not an annual occurrence. And this year has also been a lean one for the annual occurrences too, with Ms Leon and Mr Jones both taking breaks from providing new adventures for their Venetian detectives. I've just started VV and so expect a review here soon. 3.8.2025  The summer lull in trips also saw me buying a lovely little painting of arches in the Piazza San Marco (see News Page) and finally starting to scan in the highlights of my slide collection. I began taking them in 1976, after I bought my first proper SLR camera. And boy has London changed in those nearly-50 years! (Examples on the News Page too) 11.7.2025  Fans will know that Donna Leon put the kibosh on English-subtitled versions of episodes of the German-made Brunetti TV series after episode 18. But now, through the miracle of AI, an anonymous source has provided episode 19 with English  subtitles, which is reviewed here, with more to come. 8.7.2025 No trips of late, but last week I did a Courtauld Inst Summer School called Constructing the Heart of Empire: London’s Public Architecture. A bit of a mouthful, but not too political, dealing, as it did, with Adam, Wren and Pugin. We got to visit Adam's Home House, which is now a private club and hence unvistable for us plebs, and The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a spectacular building off Whitehall only open during Open House weekend, if you book ahead and your luck's in. 30.5.2025 Three trips in three months - phew! A bit of a rest now, until three-in-a-row during August, September and October. I've just posted the report on my Alsatian trip and yes - it does feature dogs! But also - WARNING - reports of the torture of ducks and geese. 30.3.2025 I think that we can all be forgiven for assuming that this year will see new novels starring Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti and Philip Gwynne Jones's Nathan Sutherland. It's been that way for years. Not this year, though. PGJ is to alternate years between Venice and a new series set in Sicily, so the next Nathan is due in 2026. And it looks like we aren't getting a new Brunetti this year, the first time this has happened since the first one in 1992, although there is another volume of DL's biographical jottings, called Backstage, out in August. The only bright spot, then, is the publication in September of Venetian Vespers by John Banville, an old favourite novelist. 18.3.2025 The daffodils are up, the trees are budding, the sap is rising, and so a (not so) young man’s thoughts turn to travel. First up is Salzburg, next week. In May I have a week in Milan booked, which might result in a new page on Churches of Venice, but will definitely involve longer visits to galleries visited on previous trips and at least one visit to the famous monumental cemetery. September sees me on an architectural guided trip to Venice, and in October I’ll be in Florence for the big Fra Angelico shows. 16.2.2025 Well here's a thing, and not a thing that was mentioned in the books-to-look-forward-to articles in the New Year newspapers. Next week there's a new book out by Laurent Binet, a 'proper' author who we like, called Perspective. It's premise is that the artist Bronzino was murdered while painting his last fresco in San Lorenzo in Florence and that Vasari was employed to investigate. It's in the form of letters and seems to be not exactly accurate, history-wise, as Bronzino's fresco, according to the book's blurb, is said to have featured a racy portrait of Maria de Medici as a naked Venus. As his famous fresco is of The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence a certain amount of poetic license is suspected. We'll see. old news here September 2025 John Banville Venetian Vespers Churches of Norfolk Trips August 2025 Andrea di Robilant This Earthly Globe - a Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World Venice Rich Heritage (Drawing Conclusions) Brunetti TV July 2025 Andrew Taylor The Fire Court London Margaret Willes Liberty over London Bridge: A History of the People of Southwark London In Good Faith (A Question of Belief) Brunetti TV Andrew Taylor The Ashes of London Philip Gwynne Jones The Magus of Sicily Related works Peter Burns Shadow Thieves London June 2025 James Alistair Henry Pagans London May 2025 Alsace Trips Nell Zink Sister Europe Berlin April 2025 Milan Trips Jessie Burton Hidden Treasure London Richard Trench London Before the Blitz   March 2025 Salzburg Trips  February 2025 Laurent Binet Perspective Florence Liza Picard Victorian London Elizabeth Macneal The Burial Plot London December 2024 Alan Moore The Great When London Andrew Saint London 1870-1914: A City at its Zenith Fiona Rule The Worst Street in London 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

Venice // Florence // London // Berlin Copyright © Jeff Cotton 1998-2025 27 years of reading and travelling