Zilong 王子龍, which explain the documents of the Hua Yi yiyu 華夷譯語 (Sino-foreign vocabularies). Then, the reader is taken on a time travel into the Qing Dynasty, analyzing Manchu language studies through different actors: the Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–88) with the Manchu-Latin grammar Elementa Linguae Tartaricae; the Manchu Uge (Wuge 舞格) and the Chinese Cheng Mingyuan 程明遠 with the 1730 Manchu manual Qingwen qimeng 清文啓蒙; and finally, in 1848, the Manchu-Chinese translator Bujilgen Jakdan and his poems, read with the help of his collaborator Hai Yu 海玉. As implied by the book’s subtitle—and also stated by the author herself—the inspi- ration behind the structuring of the text comes from the 1972 Italian novel Le città invisibili (Invisible cities) written by Italo Calvino (1923–85), a book whose reading can make many of the author’s choices more understandable. First, because Nappi takes inspiration from it for the structuring of the chapters, and because Calvino himself staged a fictional dialogue in China between Marco Polo and Qubilai Khan, and finally, because Calvino said that his book was something like a last love poem to cities in an increasingly unlivable world. And just like Calvino, Nappi also composes a love poem for translation, bringing to light the processes of dialogue and understanding between languages and cultures, reconstructing those invisible cities made of words, which are almost like a message to overcome differences, remembering the cities made of encoun- ters and conversations in multiple languages, beyond incommunicability and separation which today seem to rage. As the author writes in her preface, this book is a “work with primary sources to tell a story about the past that aims to inform how we think about the present and how we might make possible futures” (vii). The author’s goal is to strike and open up the debate, leaving much food for thought to the reader. In fact, if cities are a set of many things—memories, desires, signs of culture—so are translations, cities made up of many different elements but often ana- lyzed only in the light of their finished aspect, while the complex structure and efforts behind them remain invisible. This book attempts to bring these aspects back to our attention. Arianna Magnani, Kore University of Enna doi:10.1017/rqx.2023.135 Accogliere e curare: Ospedali e culture delle nazioni nella Monarchia ispanica (secc. XVI–XVII). Elisa Novi Chavarria. I libri di Viella 366. Rome: Viella, 2020. 210 pp. €25. Over the last fifty years scholars have intensely studied medieval and early modern charity, healthcare, and social protection in the main urban centers of Southern Europe. Even the charitable institutions and confraternities of Naples and Palermo, REVIEWS 261 https://doi.org/10.1017/rqx.2023.136 Published online by Cambridge University Press