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Guardo la città dal tetto.

Guardo la città dal tetto.
I look at the city from the roof.
From Lesson 48:Articulated prepositions with di and da (del, dal)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Guardo la città dal tetto.

Why is it dal tetto instead of da il tetto?
In Italian, when the preposition da (from) is followed by a definite article like il (the), they combine into one single word. Since tetto (roof) is a masculine singular noun starting with a single consonant, it uses the article il. When you combine da + il, they merge to form the articulated preposition dal.
The English translation says "I look at", but I don't see a word for "at" in the Italian sentence. Why?
The Italian verb guardare already means "to look at" or "to watch." Unlike English, Italian doesn't require an extra preposition here. You just connect the verb directly to the thing you are looking at: guardo la città.
How do I know dal means "from the" here? Doesn't da sometimes mean "by" or "since"?
You have to rely on the context! While da can mean "by" or "since" in other situations, it is the primary preposition used to express origin or a physical starting point. Since you are looking outwards from a physical location (il tetto), da means "from".
Why does città have an accent mark on the last letter?
The accent mark tells you to put the spoken stress on that final syllable (chit-TAH). As a bonus rule to remember: nouns ending in an accented vowel like città never change their spelling in the plural. "The city" is la città, and "the cities" is le città.

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