‘120 pictures by four photographers to whom the Meeting assigned a survey on the places which are historically essential to the development of European civilisation, indicative of a certain way of life, or able to suggest a new concrete way of seeing and building reality at the end of this millennium. The work of Luigi Ghirri (born in Scandiano, Italy, in 1943) seeks a way of purifying our gaze, which is so polluted by the apparently inextricable confusion between the reality of famous places like Rome, Capri or the region of Puglia and their equally real image, as portrayed and infinitely multiplied by the mass media. Joan Fontcuberta (born in Barcelona, in 1955) analyses in a sort of visual diary all the contradictory faces of his home town. The striking harshness of lights, places and situations reveal the enigmatic trace of the further meaning of things, in the map of the visible city. Giovanni Chiaramonte (born in Varese, Italy, in 1948) presents his work in two parts: the first is dedicated to the stratification of the various civilisations which shaped modern Sicily, the second looks at the Portuguese town of Evora, which grew above a Roman centre confined within some old walls till the 1960’s and which witnesses in the work of architect Siza the continuation of the image and the identity of a new area built opposite the historical town centre. Finally, Gabriele Basilico (born in Mano, Italy, in 1944) revisits – outside any myth – the image of Venice, a town which is the emblem of the destiny of Europe, living memory written on the water.’