The city is an essential theme of modernity in literature, architecture, photography and firm. This book first focuses on ardent reactions to the metropolitan explosion in the 19th century, with Baudelaire and Poe as key figures. More recent representations of the city are then investigated, in Europe and the United States. Patricia Lombardo reflects on the way in which the changes in human perception created by urbanization are expressed in the various arts, in terms of form and content.