Claude Opus 5.5 turns Invisible Cities into a mesmerizing interactive 3D visualization in one shot
I gave Opus 5.5 one prompt and six hours to visualize Invisible Cities
I gave Claude Opus 5.5 a single prompt to visualize all 55 cities from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities using three.js, with six hours to make a masterpiece. It finished in 1 hour 25 minutes using six parallel subagents and $74 in API tokens, producing a stunning 3D city. GPT-6 Astra took 53 minutes and $10 but had more design slop. The results left me in awe—and wondering about my own role in interactive media.
I used roughly half of the six hours. The remaining polish has diminishing returns, but I can do another round if you want.
- camillovisini
A couple of years ago, after reading the book, I sketched some of them on Procreate with an isometric grid, but not all 55. I only arrived at number 4, since each took multiple hour...
https://camillovisini.com/drawing/fc4jc6-le-citta-invisibili...
https://camillovisini.com/drawing/p2yrdj-le-citta-invisibili...
- potomushto
I understand why that’s impressive. But I don’t feel much. I guess, I was just used to envy how much people can be absorbed by some idea to spend so much time implementing it. Now it feels like a single shotted nice-typography-and-all presentation at work that someone did 10 min before the meeting.
- droidjj
If you haven’t read the book yet, I’m tempted to warn you against opening the visualization. Part of the joy of reading this book is letting your mind’s eye run wild, and I fear if I read it for the first time after toying with this site, I’d be remembering the cities rather than conjuring them.
- uludag
Invisible Cities is my favorite piece of literature hands down. The audiobook narrated by Richard Higgins is also done so beautifully and can't recommend it more.
As neat as this project is, this does no justice to whatsoever to the book. On the surface Invisible Cities seems to be a book about random cities' descriptions. In reality though, this book is about semiotics, meaning, language, and it's limits.
- SiempreViernes
The first city I clicked on at random had the opening phrase:
> Arriving, you rejoice at its bridges, each different
The model city had like five bridges total, three of which were didn't bridge anything at all but instead sat in the middle of the river and went along its flow, the "bridges" for some reason pretending to be small islands.
- Joker_vD
Kublai Khan received an ornate letter signed by Marco Polo: "In Madrid, City of Lost
Things, no item remains where it was set. If one drops his key in the dirt, he may
never re-enter his home, and, even if he manages to stoop and recover the key, he may
rise to find a tulip garden where his house once stood. In complementary fashion,
things lost by others are forever turning up: A pocket watch on a coffee table. A fond
memory in your recollection. I even know of a prince who turned up in a prison cell.
When he appealed to the guards for his release, he failed to find the crown on his
head, and when he was asked his name, he searched his thoughts, but could not find it.
Indeed, the only hope now for the release of this prince of Spain is for you to send
back 300 ducats for his release. Of course, he will reward you handsomely once he is
out. Yours truly, Marco." Kublai Khan cocked an eyebrow and declared before his court,
"Hey, everyone: Looks like we're about to get ripped off by the guy who traded gold
for paper!" The court erupted in booming laughter.
— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities 2: This Time It's Visible.
- alm4x
The demo does not work on Firefox or Safari on the iPhone SE, for what it's worth. I can't scroll down to close the splash screen.
- KellyCriterion
I copied the prompt from the article and inserted it into Claude, here is what it created:
https://claude.ai/share/6bbd421a-147d-435d-bc00-7e93b393b943
(the standalone version at the very end of the chat is the one that runs in the browser)
Well, overall, by faaaaar not that beautiful as what the author from the article received? :-D
(though, it was done with Opus 4.8)