Zora is a city that no one, having seen it, can forget. Not because it leaves an unusual image in your mind, like other memorable cities, but because it exists in precise, ordered memory — a succession of streets, houses, and doors, each detail fitting into a harmonious sequence, like notes in a musical score. Its beauty lies not in grand monuments, but in the way its parts connect.

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Zora is one of the cities in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, described by Marco Polo. Through Zora, as through all the cities he recounts, Polo is also describing his home, Venice. By being fixed to remain unforgettable, the city loses the ability to change, and like a memory frozen in time, it eventually fades away.