But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows every morning on a tower. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. Public tours with Invisible Cities Manchester take place every weekend, and cost around £11.50pp book in advance at invisible-cities.Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. Invisible Cities Manchester was one of seven start-ups recently awarded co-working space in Federal for a year, and all tour revenue is invested supporting the guides there are also plans to publish a book of Danny’s poetry. Operating in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and York (people from other cities can register their interest), it was launched here last October by Manchester University graduate Alice Sparks, who had attended a tour elsewhere and decided her native city would benefit.ĭanny is currently the only Manchester guide, but Sparks ultimately hopes to recruit five (as in the original Invisible City, Edinburgh) and is working with relevant organisations to host a training day this month. Founded by Zakia Moulaoui in 2016, Invisible Cities is a social enterprise that trains people who have experienced homelessness to become walking tour guides of their own city - to locals, tourists and corporate groups.
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