In this book, Mitsumasa Anno, creator of Anno's Journey, takes readers on another mind-stretching journey of the imagination, this time to Italy. Using no words, but with eloquently detailed watercolor paintings, Mr. Anno shares his special vision of this fascinating country, which for thousands of years has been both the source and the preserver of much of what we value in western culture today.

He shows us children playing their traditional games in the fertile fields and orchards where farmers are busily at work. In the narrow, cobbled streets of medieval villages and towns, throngs of people view colorful parades, trade their wares, and exchange news and gossip. Moving freely through time and space, Anno's observant traveler also visits a teeming Renaissance city where portraits of modern movie stars are anachronistically being sold in the shadow o Michelangelo's Pieta, while a statue of Romulus and Remus with the wolf that mothered them is wheeled past a replica of Christopher Columbus's sailing vessel. 

Hundreds of other images from the fine arts and architecture, history and social studies, myth and folklore will delight the diligent searcher in the exquisitely-drawn illustrations. Such diverse characters as Tarzan, Ali Baba, William Tell, and the Three Little Pigs lend an international tone to the artfully crowded scenario. Here is an invitation to viewers of all ages to gaze through the eyes of a most perceptive artist at a country rich in culture, beauty and history.

From the dust jacket