Franco Cardini wanted to dedicate his last work to Prague and the magic that this city has always had on writers from around the world. “The magical capital of old Europe is an extraordinary journey through time and space: it’s the city of the dark wonders of the emperor-alchemist Rudolf II, of music boxes, and the Jewish cemetery, the Golem, ghosts and monstrous Kafkian mutations. It’s the city of the flamboyant darkness of the Nazi occupation, of the leaden gloom of the communist years, of the Sixty-eight and the incredible lightness of the Being of Milan Kundera. Prague, a place Mozart loved most in the world. A walk long as the book, where the last destination is Charles Bridge from where you can gaze at Vltava and suddenly understand what Europe is”. Cardini is a full professor of medieval history at the University of Florence, and as a journalist he collaborates on the cultural pages of various newspapers. For half a century now, he covers Crusades, Pilgrimages and the relations between Christian Europe and Islam.
Franco Cardini,
Praga. Capitale segreta d’Europa,
Il Mulino: 2020,
368 p.