Georg Simmel und Italien

This essay focuses Simmel’s three short sketches devoted to Florence, Rome and Venice as treated as pieces of art. Starting off with his famous essay on picture and frame it is shown that Simmel’s approach to the three cities is definitely “non realistic”, but, steadily dealing with the relationship between their esthetical appearance and their “concepts”, almost physiognomical. While Florence is a unit of spirit and matter, a concept perfectly realized, Rome, much more complex and an organism never fully integrated, illustrates the platonic idea beyond time and history, especially in fragments and ruins. Finally, Venice, with its ever changing surfaces, lights and moods, qualifies as the city of “lie” and illusion. Outlining to Simmel’s concepts of mask, adventure, and “bridging” the gaps between opposite cultural phenomena, the essay alludes to understand the three cities as metaphors for modes of being.