A direct railway link across the Italy-Slovenia border as part of a new Milan-Ljubljana train is bringing back the infrastructure of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A new route opening up direct access between between Italy and Slovenia will spin passengers back more than a century to the times of the Habsburg empire.
Where was Marco Polo born? What is his native country? A question that made little sense in the 13th century – everything was under the control of the Republic of Venice – is nowadays a source of debates, especially between Croatia and Italy. A new project tries to overcome them
The Grand Canal, Venice by James Holland
For nativist movements across the world, the past is a rich source of material waiting to be reshaped. Nationalists hark back to a “Golden Era” of lost power and pride, constructing histories that are often then used to fuel nostalgia and resentment amongst the population. In 2017, for example, India’s government secretly appointed a group of scholars to alter school textbooks, using historical material to promote their ideological view that India is a Hindu country. We have seen that such tactics can be effective; in the early 20th century, powerful groups in the US campaigned to present the Confederacy as fighting for “states’ rights” rather than the institution of slavery. By 1940 most textbooks included this discredited theory.