This city isn't like others ...

"This city isn’t like others, Matera has said.  It’s not only big, it’s complicated.  It’s contradictory.  If you look at it from a pedestrian perspective, it seems like there are a lot of piazzas and porticoes.  But if you fly over it in a helicopter, because of the courtyards and gardens between the buildings, it looks like there’s a forest below.  And if you go beneath its surface you’ll find that it’s a city built on water and canals, like Venezia.  It’s freezing cold in the winter and tropical in the summer.  It has communist ideals and millionaire cooperative organisations.  It’s run by four different mafia groups that, rather than shoot at each other, help each other recycle Italy’s drug’s money.  Tortellini and satanic cults.  This city isn’t what it seems, Ispettore; it’s always hiding something."


The above passage describes Bologna and is taken from Almost Blue, a novella by Carlo Lucarelli.  I like it because it paints a very quick and vivid description of the city and lets the reader place and visualise it.  Which other writers do you think create this kind of sense of place in such few words?