Storia Dei Balcani

In the historical and literary imagination, the Balkans stand out as a large, frightening and ill-defined space and are often viewed negatively, like a region inhabited by small and mischievous peoples, tormented by racial and ethnic hatred, always ready to burst into violent conflicts. The present volume redefines space in positive terms, taking as its starting point the cultural, historical and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent though complex whole. The eminent historian Andrew Wachtel paints the Balkans as a geographical border space in which four of the world's greatest civilizations have overlapped, creating a stratified and complex local civilization, dynamic and sometimes easily flammable. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and of ancient Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey and Roman Catholic Europe have met, clashed and sometimes combined together. The history of the Balkans is therefore a story of creative loans, from the local people and the various civilizations that have conquered the area making the Balkan one of the most interesting and complex regions in the world.