Of all the romanticized cities in the world, Florence, Italy, might be the most charmingly unassuming. The heart and soul of a Tuscan region marked by an overabundance of heart and soul, the mid-sized metropolis boasts a stunning climate and golden light that grants life to a culture otherwise frozen in amber. It's both big and small enough to overwhelm and to share intimate secrets. If nothing else, Florence is the kind of humble fantasyland that goads even fleeting visitors to make grossly sweeping generalizations about its place among all the romanticized cities in the world. That sort of pride of ownership serves as the underlying theme to David Leavitt's Florence, A Delicate Case, a highly personal take on a city largely unchanged since the Renaissance. The book opens with an introduction to a tourist enclave that, after "repuls[ing] the new arrival with a hard jab in the side, a frigid stare," quickly "encourages one to the most sentimental speculation and fantasy." A novelist with a knack for mannered, fanciful language, Leavitt promptly bends this installment of the "Writer And The City" series to fit his own sentimental regard for unsentimental affectation. Most of the book focuses on Florence's storied late-Victorian expatriates—including E.M. Forster, Henry James, and Lord Alfred Douglas—who fashioned the city into an outpost for transgressive dilettantism. Leavitt has a field day with his comically arch subjects, digging up book passages and gossip rich with the self-conscious quips of dithering dandy life. Tracing Florence's status as a "sodomitical hotbed" back to the 1300s, when city officials launched an "Office Of The Night" to deal with a preponderance of men ogling young boys, Leavitt goes on a bit too long with his own pet obsession. But he weaves the Anglo-Florentine sense of outsider entitlement into the city's fabric, intermingling lighthearted readings of seamy recreation with the spookiness of Florence's lifelike marble statues and a central piazza that serves as "the shower room of the ages, where gods and heroes parade naked, display outsize genitals, boast of conquests, show off trophies." The rest of the book takes a leisurely stroll through the city's history, telling the tales of Michelangelo's David sculpture, the comings and goings of World Wars, and the ages-old upkeep of Florence's innumerable artistic treasures. The result is a brief, highly pleasant spell of summery transport, and a loving valentine to a city with more than a few arrows to sling.