Umberto Eco: 'It's culture, not war, that cements European identity'

Outside Umberto Eco's office window in Milan looms the intimidating mass of Sforzesco castle, a reminder, with its towers and black birds, of various continental wars. Here once stood the 14th-century Castrum Portae Jovis – the Porta di Giove fortress – which was destroyed by the short-lived Aurea Republic of 1447. Between these walls, Leonardo Da Vinci and Donato Bramante once laboured; these ver

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"And since Pierre Bayard is right, we know there are books we have yet to read that will help us reflect on cultures different from our own. Little by little: that is how our European identity will become more profound."