Olinda

Hidden Cities 1 In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin (...) That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses it toward the outside. Olinda is certainly not the only city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring(...) and so, on and on, to the heart of the city, a totally new 129 Olinda which, in its reduced dimensions retains the features and the flow of lymph of the first Olinda and of all the Olindas that have blossomed one from the other; and within this innermost circle there are already blossoming-though it is hard to discern them-the next Olinda and those that will grow after it.(Calvino, 1974, p. 129)