Abstract: In its allegorical travel through imaginary places, Calvino's Invisible Cities shows the oscillation between the limits and the opening of reason. Through the binomial "memory-desire," Marco Polo, the hero of this poetical Baedeker, insists on finding a place that responds to his longing for completeness. The pessimistic vision of certain cities is broken by an "open reason," which represents, for Calvino, the only possible "reading" of a dramatic travel through experience and existence.