This is a lucid study of Walter Benjamin's lifelong fascination with the city and forms of metropolitan experience, highlighting the relevance of Benjamin's work to our contemporary understanding of modernity.

Graeme Gilloch is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Salford. His research interests include contemporary social and cultural theory and visual culture.

Acknowledgements.

List of Abbreviations.

Introduction.

1. Urban Images: From Ruins to Revolutions.

2. Urban Memories: Labyrinth and Childhood.

3. Dialectical Images: Paris and the Phantasmagoria of Modernity.

4. Urban Allegories: Paris, Baudelaire and the Experience of Modernity.

Conclusion.

Notes.

Biography.

Index.