Pavia, Italy

Pavia is a small and quiet town in Lombardy, northern Italy. Many agricultural products are made there and its university was founded in 1361. Rovelli mentions it in Chapter 1 as a place in which Einstein spent some of his year ‘loafing.’ His family had moved there to build up a new electricity company, and he sat in on lectures at the university.

Condofuri, Italy

Condofuri is a community in Reggio Calabria on the almost southernmost tip of Italy. It is on the coast to the Mediterranean and backed by the Aspromonte mountains. Rovelli enjoyed the ocean here on his breaks from university courses. He stayed in a “hippy-ish” old house and read his textbook on the beach, where the waves inspired his understanding of relativity (3).

Spacetime

In the twentieth century physicists developed a four-dimensional view of the universe, combining space and time, which explained many physical phenomena...