Il giardino del Mediterraneo. Storie e paesaggi da Omero all’Antropocene

In the middle of the Mediterranean Sea lies Sicily, a Greek and Roman island long dominated by the Arabs and now the first port of call for thousands of desperate migrants seeking to reach Europe. It is also an ideal observatory from which to study the landscapes of Mare Nostrum, the Roman name for the Mediterranean, whose 46,000 kilometres of wildly varied coastline have enabled a constant exchange of goods and ideas over time. Travelling by foot along its coasts and inland areas, I will seek out traces of encounters between time, nature and humans both on the Sicilian landscape and the greater Mediterranean region, with the goal of crafting a volume that is part travel journal (inspired by those of celebrated earlier explorers such as Humboldt and Darwin) and part compendium of current perspectives from the fields of botany, geology and ecology as well as history, literature and folklore.