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University of Virginia Press, Published 2010. Hardcover, 81 pp.; 19 cm; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated throughout with the author's watercolors and pen sketches, chiefly in color, including a double-page hand-drawn map of Florence.
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Orange-brown cloth over boards, gold-stamped line drawing of the Duomo on front cover, gold lettering on spine. Mild edge wear to covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket carries a Ponsi watercolor of the Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio, jacket design by Chris Harrison; mild shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. [From the jacket flaps] Many years have passed since architect Andrea Ponsi settled in Florence, and still he feels he does not fully comprehend this mysterious city. The way Florence eludes understanding, however, can be an opportunity, to keep seeking, to keep exploring. . . . His tour of the city is one of continually shifting light and perspective, of stunning symmetry and an even more compelling asymmetry, of sudden transitions from bustling streets to the most perfect silence. . . . The author notes the city's recurring geometry, the square courtyards, triangular spires, octagonal plaques and pillars, and marvels at a room almost too big to be called a room. He views the city from various terraces and likens the expanse of rising and falling rooftops to ocean waves. . . . Here is Florence as labyrinth, possessing a medieval density that is relieved only by the sudden views of sky framed by its piazzas. . . . Ponsi sees the city itself as a living body, through whose veins its inhabitants course. . . . The book's elegant, concise prose, as well as its balance of the civic with the intensely personal, recalls the Calvino of Marcovaldo and Invisible Cities. The text is accompanied by Ponsi's own spare but evocative watercolors and sketches, which, like his words, seek to behold rather than pin down. Andrea Ponsi is an architect, designer, and educator currently living and working in Florence. He is the author of Thinking Lines and Firenze: Changing Viewpoints, among other books, and his work has been the subject of exhibitions in Europe and the United States.