"The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things. Your footsteps follow not what is outside the eyes, but what is within, buried, erased." 

- Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities"