Arrival in Cittàgazze
Lyra steps through her father's opening in the sky into a seaside city emptied of adults.
At the end of Northern Lights, Lord Asriel tears an opening in the Northern Lights into a parallel universe, and Lyra and Pantalaimon pass through it. In The Subtle Knife she arrives in Cittàgazze, a city in a third world, where she meets and befriends Will Parry, a twelve-year-old boy from our world's Oxford. Will has stumbled on a window into Cittàgazze after accidentally killing an intruder and fleeing.
Quick Facts
- Location
- Cittàgazze (Parallel World)
- Key figure
- Lyra Silvertongue
Lore & Background
Cittàgazze, sometimes abbreviated to Ci'gazze, means 'City of the Magpies' in Italian. It is a seaside town reminiscent of those near the Mediterranean Sea, with quaint restaurants, wide cobbled roads and ancient architecture, as well as electric lights, refrigerators and department stores. Its most significant feature is the Torre degli Angeli, the Tower of the Angels, in which the Subtle Knife is first encountered. Lord Boreal describes the city as having previously been a crossroads between all the worlds.
Reader's Guide
The city is plagued by Spectres, which are invisible to pre-adolescents but eat away the dæmons of those old enough to see them, leaving them zombie-like and lifeless. The city is therefore devoid of adults and populated only by small gangs of children. Asriel's opening of the passage from his world to Cittàgazze caused a massive surge in the Spectre population. From Cittàgazze, Will returns to his own world to seek information about his father, and Lyra goes with him to learn about Dust.
More in Narrative Arcs & Timeline
Elsewhere in His Dark Materials
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