A quartet of essays on great European cities from the groundbreaking thinker Georg Simmel 'Vnice possesses the ambiguous beauty of adventure, floating rootlessly through life, like a torn flower borne on the sea' Georg Simmel was a brilliant, groundbreaking thinker, whose wide-ranging lectures held audiences spellbound in turn-of-the-century Berlin and throughout Europe. The theories of this maverick 'wandering-priest' left their mark on a whole generation of philosophers, poets and sociologists, including Heidegger and Rilke. The quartet of essays contained in this book includes dazzling portraits of Italy's iconic cities of art and history, as well as Simmel's hugely influential 'The Metropolis and the Life of the Spirit', one of the most important analyses of urban life and the alienation of the individual ever written. Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was one of the first generation of German sociologists and an acquaintance of Max Weber. His study of philosophy, his wide reading in history and the sciences and his astute criticism meant Simmel became a renowned intellectual in his lifetime. He was known for his illuminating lectures and rare gifts as a speaker, exploring topics including the effect of the modern metropolis on human psychology, the philosophy of history and the philosophy of money.