Abitare la metropoli begins with Gabriele Basilico’s memory of being born in Milan in August 1944, while the war continued and the city remained exposed to bombing. From that personal point of origin, the book expands into a sustained consideration of Milan, metropolitan space, and the photographer’s vocation as an attentive observer of the built environment.

Its central text grew from two evenings at Milan’s Teatro No’hma–Teresa Pomodoro in 2010, when Basilico presented these reflections aloud. The 2013 Contrasto volume restores the text in full under the editorial care of Giovanna Calvenzi, giving durable form to ideas Basilico had developed over many years. Autobiography, professional reflection, and an attachment to cities are held together without separating lived experience from photographic practice.

The book is especially revealing about Basilico’s understanding of documentary photography. For him, observation does not exclude formal interpretation: documentary purpose remains bound to beauty, visual order, and the aesthetic translation of the world. The illustrated context and the volume’s association with architectural and street photography place this argument close to the urban subjects through which his work is understood. Rather than treating the metropolis merely as spectacle, Basilico considers it as a space to be inhabited, read, and repeatedly examined.

Published in Italian as a 95-page paperback, Abitare la metropoli is concise but conceptually substantial. Its importance for a serious collection lies not in claims of scarcity, but in the direct access it offers to Basilico’s own account of his methods and convictions. The proximity between first-person memory, photographic thought, and the modern city makes the book a focused companion to his images—and a useful document for understanding how architectural observation can become both civic inquiry and artistic form.