Centuries of a place's history cannot, of course, be reconstructed from the available verbal and written fragments—sometimes they are not enough to piece together even a single event from the past, not even so-called undeniable documents—but we consider it unacceptable not to convey, without parochial exaggerations or pointless romanticism, every trace of written or oral testimony, at least to those who are not dazzled by cheap pomposity and the unattractive flourishes of commemorative speeches, and who seek in the tangled shadows of truly wild and inaccessible times the elusive phantoms and the untold stories that still haunt their native land...