A fictional city refers to a town, city or village that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or refers to a settlement that people believe exist without definitive proof, such as Plato's account of Atlantis which some believed was fiction while others believed it existed.
Cultures have always had legends and stories of fictional cities from the earliest times. Other fictional cities appear most commonly as settings or subjects of myth, literature, movies, or video games.
Fictional cities appear commonly in stories of early mythology. Some such cities are lost (Atlantis), hidden (Shambhala), destroyed (Ys) or must be reached by difficult means (Asphodel Meadows)
During the mid to late 1500s, several expeditions were made by various groups of people in order to locate what they believed to be a city rich with gold; El Dorado. In 1541 Gonzalo Pizarro, governor of Quito, Ecuador, banded together 340 soldiers and about 4000 natives and led them in search of the fabled city. That same year, Philipp von Hutten led an exploring party from Coro on the coast of Venezuela. Despite having been disproven in by Alexander von Humboldt during his Latin-America expedition (1799–1804,. there are some people who still believe El Dorado is yet to be found.
Most Superhero and secret agent comics and some thrillers also use fictional cities as backdrops although most of these cities exist only for a single story, episode or an issue of a comic book. There are notable exceptions, such as Metropolis and Smallville in Superman, Stephen King's Castle Rock and Emerald City which appears throughout Frank L. Baum's Oz Books and appears in several film adaptations and animated films.
Read more about Fictional City: Purposes, Regional Stereotypes, Notable Examples
Famous quotes containing the words fictional and/or city:
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
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