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The Imaginary City of Urville

Atrocity Guide | August 3, 2026



In 2006, a mysterious book titled Urville was published. Through hundreds of hand drawn illustrations and a recorded history stretching back to the Bronze Age, the book documents the decades long project of an imaginary city created by French outsider artist Gilles Tréhin.

Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6pSxRVAvmg
End credits song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDXJS1GT-eo
Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/atrocityguide

Urville book: https://us.jkp.com/products/urville

Written by Atrocity Guide

Comments

This post currently has 45 comments.

  1. @AtrocityGuide

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    For those who missed my community post:

    I know this video is a bit different from my usual content, as it’s shorter in length and falls somewhere between documentary and video essay. This is a topic I’ve actually wanted to cover for years but always decided against because I was too worried there wasn’t “enough there” for a full-length video. I’ve been working on a longer video for the past year, which is almost ready and will be out soon, but I needed a break from it in order to reinvigorate myself creatively, so I decided to work on this video for the past month. Going forward, I’m planning to intersperse more short videos like this in between the longer ones. This will give me the opportunity to explore more topics that don’t warrant an hour+, upload much more frequently, and keep the creative process fresh. Longer videos will still be coming with the same frequency, but I think this new rhythm will be very beneficial for me and the channel. Thank you all for your patience and support!

  3. @Booskaboo1993

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    As someone who went to architecture school and loves worldbuilding as a hobby, seeing Gilles get so much love and support for his project is wonderful. It's a seriously impressive city that he built.

  5. @nolanfromnoland

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    This is lowkey making me emotional. I'm also autistic, and have similar projects to his comprising of numerous countries, photoshopped satellite imagery, population and climate classification tables, languages, etc, etc. Heck, even the film and actors thing I've also done. I started my first project in late-2017, and now have 26 countries (and counting!). I know it'll be next to impossible to finish each project (till full completion), but I like to imagine myself working on them indefinitely. I have little desire to upload them to the internet, but I have decided to archive them if the time comes on a hard disk of sorts.

  7. @plankcaller

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    interesting how he free-hands architecture almost perfectly while people look way simpler. i imagine it's because while he cares about individuals and the concept of people living in his world, he doesn't really care about how people look like as much as where they live in and what they do. i dunno this guy's a genius.

  12. @xxzxmelonxzxxx

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    if u want a society with autistic genius people like this, you gotta be ok with your society having autistic weird people too, cause "normal" is not where the genius comes from.

  30. @shibe14

    August 3, 2026 at 1:50 pm

    The thumbnail, the clips used in this video, as well as probably all the images you can find of Gilles on the internet shows him in the past.
    Which for a moment led me to believe for some reason he's already gone.
    Well fortumately that's not the case, he just stayed out of public eyes

Comments are closed.

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