It is.  One that has been all but lost to time, back home.

[Time and more than a few disasters of an almost unprecedented scope, be they natural or otherwise.  But still, the effect is the same - there are few, now, who would so much as recognize the city he's recreating.  A handful or two, perhaps, and fewer still who had genuinely lived there. But that is no reason he cannot make even pale recreations like this. Cannot at least let people become familiar with the shape of the city, if naught else.]

As for the creature... it was all but a nightmare made flesh, in reality.

[Hence its distinctly unpleasant appearance.]