The City of the Sun, A Poetical Dialogue between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallers and a Genoese Sea-Captain

The City of the Sun, by Tommaso Campanella was originally written in Italian in 1602, just after he was condemned to life imprisonment for sedition and heresy. It was later revised and a Latin version was written in 1613-14. The first printed edition in Latin was issued at Frankfurt in 1623. This is one of the most important utopias, and may have influenced Bacon's New Atlantis.

The City of the Sun is a dialogue between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea-Captain, describing a theocratic society where goods, women and children are held in common. It also resembles the City of Adocentyn in the Picatrix, an Arabic guide to magical town planning.

In the final part of the work, Campanella prophesies - in the veiled language of astrology - that the Spanish kings, in alliance with the Pope, are destined to be the instruments of a Divine Plan: the final victory of the True Faith and its diffusion in the whole world.