Georg Simmel was a brilliant, groundbreaking thinker, whose wide-ranging lectures held audiences spellbound in turn-of-the-century Berlin and throughout Europe. The theories of this maverick 'wandering-priest', left their mark on a whole generation of philosophers, poets and sociologists including Benjamin, Heidegger and Rilke.

The quartet of essays contained in this book includes dazzling portraits of Italy's iconic cities of art and history, Rome, Florence and Venice, as well as Simmel's hugely influential 'The Metropolis and the Life of the Spirit', one of the most important analyses of urban life and the alienation of the individual ever written.