Printed with black shading on cream-colored paper, we look down onto interconnected staircases, walkways, and arched buildings that shift constantly to create an optical illusion in this horizontal lithograph. The buildings have plus-shaped footprints with four-way rounded, tunnel-like roofs. Two people blow horns out of two windows, and a houseplant sits on one ledge. Two people climb ladders in the lower corners, and two lizards climb a rounded, half-moon shaped staircase at the bottom center. One man sits on the floor with knees drawn up to his chest, a woman with dark skin walks on what first appears to be a roof but could also be an arched walkway. She wears a white head scarf, white short-sleeved shirt, and long skirt and carries a basket with both hands. Near the lower left corner, a man rows a boat along what could be a canal, and other windows look out onto trees or a townscape. The staircases constantly flip so they first seem to be facing us and then turned upside down. Spaces that look hollow at one glance become solid forms at another or when compared to a nearby object, animal, or person. The eye simply cannot make a single reality out of the different planes, ups, downs, ins, and outs represented here. The artist signed the work in a blocky monogram in the top left corner, “MCE III-‘55” and wrote in graphite under the lower left corner, “MC Escher No 51/57.”