The metropolis was always at the center of Gabriele Basilico's interests. The theme of the anthropized landscape, the development and the historical stratifications of the cities, the margins and the suburbs in continuous transformation were the main engine of his research.

The exhibition analyses these themes by comparing the works created in the numerous cities portrayed, including Beirut, Milan, Rome, Palermo, Naples, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, London, Boston, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, New York and Shanghai, juxtaposed according to analogies and differences, assonances and dissonances, different points of view in the way of interpreting and relating the built space.

The exhibition itinerary of the exhibition is divided into five major chapters: “Milan. Portraits of factories 1978-1980 ", the first important project realized by Basilico; the "Sections of the Italian landscape", a survey on our country divided into six itineraries carried out in 1996 in collaboration with Stefano Boeri and presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale; "Beirut", two photographic campaigns exhibited together for the first time, realized in 1991 in black and white and in color in 2011, the first at the end of a long war lasting over 15 years, the second to reconstruct it; "The cities of the world", a journey through time and places from Palermo, Bari, Naples, Genoa and Milan to Istanbul, Jerusalem, Shanghai, Moscow, New York, Rio de Janeiro and many others; finally "Rome", the city in which Basilico worked on several occasions, always developing different projects until 2010, on the occasion of a stimulating and demanding comparison between the contemporary city and the eighteenth-century engravings by Giovambattista Piranesi.

In addition to the works on display, a large illustrated biography is proposed which tells through short texts and images the artistic and professional path of Basilico (several times in fact the two spheres crossed) and three videos: the first created by Tanino Musso in 1991 in Beirut and edited by Giacomo Traldi who has also reworked an interview by director Amos Gitai in 2012 dedicated to Rome and Piranesi. The third video, "About Sections of the Italian Landscape", is an interview with Stefano Boeri made by Marina Spada in 2002.