"I confini d'Europa"

The border separates and establishes different identities, it also allows the beginning of in-out, close-distance, centre-periphery exchanges. The distinctive characteristic of borders is that they are mingled by wars, trades, travels, studies, migrations. The historical and geographic background of Europe makes its limits unstable and dynamic, unperceived during the Roman Empire and after its fall. The real border arises with nation-states and their requirement of self-determination that often turned frontiers into fronts. Nowadays Europe tries to find its new identity in the common market and in a political unity only based on bureaucracy and on a mild mediation among differences. A possible option maybe a new idea of empire in terms of geographical, political and cultural identity. Cultural affinities in the Euro- mediterranean area explain the incorrectness and artificiality of defined borders for Europe and more specifically for the Mediterranean. All that generates the idea of Europe as a fortress and a distorted vision of the Other, in the present circumstances the Islamic world.