Andria : Invisible cities illustrated. Cities and the Sky. 5.

Описание: Andria

[Verse 1]
Andria turns with the stars above,
Streets in the shape of time.
Every small change that the people make
Shines in the sky like a sign.

[Chorus]
Andria, glowing bright,
City where day becomes the night.
Andria, calm and wise,
Your footsteps echo in the skies.

[Verse 2]
Andria moves in circles,
each street a wandering star.
The people walk their orbits—
they know exactly who they are.
A theater rises from shadow,
a bamboo street in the air…
Every change they make down here
shakes the far-off atmosphere.

[Chorus]
Andria… Andria…
City where the heavens lean.
Touch the stone—
and the Milky Way shifts green.
Andria… Andria…
Every step rewrites the sky.
You breathe, you build,
and constellations realign.

[Chorus]
Oh Andria, glowing bright,
City where day becomes the night.
Oh Andria, calm and wise,
Your footsteps echo in the skies.

With such art was Andria constructed that every one of its streets follows the orbit of a planet, and the buildings and places of communal life replicate the order of the constellations and the positions of the brightest stars: Antares, Alpheratz, Capella, the Cepheids. The city's calendar is regulated in such a way that work, offices, and ceremonies are arranged on a map that corresponds to the firmament on that date: thus, the days on Earth and the nights in the sky mirror each other.

Even through meticulous regulation, the life of the city flows as calmly as the motion of celestial bodies and acquires the necessity of phenomena not subject to human arbitrariness. I persuaded the citizens of Andria, praising their industrious productions and the tranquility of their spirit, to declare: "I understand well how you, feeling like a part of an unchanging sky, gears of a meticulous timepiece, refrain from making even the slightest change to your city and your customs. Andria is the only city I know where it is fitting to remain motionless in time."

They looked at me in bewilderment. "But why? Who said that?" And they led me to visit a newly constructed suspended street above a bamboo forest, a shadow theater under construction in place of the municipal dog pound, which had been relocated to the pavilions of the old lazaretto, abolished for the cure of the last plague victims, and—just inaugurated—a river port, a statue of Thales, a slide.

"And these innovations do not disrupt the astral rhythm of your city?" I asked.

"So perfect is the correspondence between our city and the sky," they replied, "that every change in Andria brings about some novelty among the stars." Astronomers peer through telescopes after every change that occurs in Andria, signaling the explosion of a nova, or the shift from orange to yellow of a remote point in the firmament, the expansion of a nebula, the bending of a spiral of the Milky Way. Every change implies a chain of other changes, in Andria as well as among the stars: the city and the sky are never the same.

Two virtues of the inhabitants of Andria are worthy of note: self-assuredness and prudence. Convinced that every innovation in the city affects the design of the sky, they calculate the risks and advantages for themselves and for the entirety of cities and worlds before making any decision.

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