The city is fertile ground for legend, whether in the depths of its sewers or behind any one of its thousands of closed doors. A labyrinth of secrets, comedies and tragedies, layer upon layer, stories have accumulated there for centuries among buildings demolished and rebuilt, struggling to be remembered amid the fleeting world of cables and plastic, apathy and lies.

The city also creates a curious mirror image of the village. Urban dwellers romanticise rural folklore, while rural folklore itself enters the city with those who migrate from the countryside, adopting new clothing and new forms and, far from dying, continually renewing itself. If urban legends share one defining quality, it is that they are alive: fleeting, challenging tales of smoke, reflections and illusion, without the supposed gentleness city-dwellers often wish to project upon rural tradition —whether that gentleness ever existed or is merely another marketing invention produced in an urban office.