When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors.
He arrives full of illusions: in Isidora, the city of his dreams, he will be young again. But the city has a special quality: through it, one can access a different kind of time. The youth he was looking for is not here: in its place, there is an older man who resembles him as he is now. Isidora is the city of memories, not of hope.