Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory in which the main protagonist, Poliphilo, pursues his love, Polia, through a dreamlike landscape.

However, an acrostic formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads "POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT", which means "Brother Francesco Colonna has dearly loved Polia".

Manutius himself claimed[citation needed] that the author was a different Francesco Colonna, a wealthy Roman governor.

Its roman typeface, cut by Francesco Griffo, is a revised version of a type which Aldus had first used in 1496 for the De Aetna of Pietro Bembo.

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is illustrated with 168 exquisite woodcuts showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams.

They depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures and the architectural features over which the author rhapsodizes, in a simultaneously stark and ornate line art style.

The illustrations are interesting because they shed light on the Renaissance man's taste in the æsthetic qualities of Greek and Roman antiquities.

[4] The psychologist Carl Jung admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of archetypes.

[11] A complete Russian translation by the art historian Boris Sokolov is now in progress, of which the "Cythera Island" part was published in 2005 and is available online.

The book is planned as a precise reconstruction of the original layout, with Cyrillic types and typography by Sergei Egorov.

[citation needed] Ten of the monuments described in the Hypnerotomachia were reconstructed with computer graphics and were first published by Esteban A. Cruz in 2006[12] and in 2012.

[13] In 2007, Cruz established a full, design-study project Formas Imaginisque Poliphili, an ongoing independent research project with the objective of reconstructing the content of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, through a multi-disciplinary approach, and with the aid of virtual and traditional reconstruction technology and methods.

Poliphilo is transported into a wild forest, where he becomes lost, encounters dragons, wolves and maidens and a large variety of architectural forms.