What is the continent we call Europe? When and how was its modern civilization founded? Which brilliant minds and what malignant personalities wrote its brightest pages and its most blood-soaked chapters?

In this book, we will answer all these questions and see European history like never before. We will encounter extravagant royals, cunning clerics, and warped monks. We will talk about shrewd merchants, conspiratorial bankers, greedy sailors, and rambunctious young seamen.

We will see oppressed minorities, abused women, tortured scientists, and inspired artists, while we read about paradoxical beliefs, spicy mysteries, gourmet recipes, sex scandals, and deadly intrigues. But, above all, we will wonder about human nature, a nature capable of the greatest achievements and the worst destructions...

Europe in 11+1 stories. From the outbreak of the medieval plague to the Florentine Renaissance. From the Fall of Constantinople to the conquest of America and India. From the romantic customs of Europeans to the great artists of the High Renaissance.

From the Reformation to the Witch Hunts and the Scientific Revolution. From the majestic Baroque to the golden age of French absolutism and to an earthquake that shook the Europeans. Society, economy, art, science, politics, and all the events that shaped European culture, presented with humor, and at the same time with substantial seriousness and with love for humanity.