‘What is the Mediterranean? A thousand things at once. Not one landscape, but landscapes without number. Not one sea, but a succession of seas. Not one civilization, but a number of civilizations, superimposed one on top of the other. To travel in the Mediterranean region is to find the Roman world in Lebanon, prehistory in Sardinia, Greek cities in Sicily, the Arab presence in Spain, and Turkish Islam in Yugoslavia. It is to reach far back in time, to the megalithic buildings of Malta and the pyramids of Egypt. It is to encounter ancient things that still live on injuxtaposition with the ultra-modern: beside the deceptive immobility of Venice are the heavy industries of Mestre; beside the fisherman’s boat, which is like the bark sailed by Ulysses, are huge tankers, and trawlers that ravage the sea bed. It is to plunge into the archaism of insular societies, and at the same time to wonder at the extreme youthfulness of very old cities which are exposed to all the winds of culture and profit and which for centuries have kept watch over the sea and lived on its resources.’