The Last Mediterranean, 1950–2010

I

The late twentieth century was one of the great periods of Mediterranean migration. Migrations out of North Africa and into and out of Israel have been discussed in the previous chapter.

In a sense, then, the Mediterranean has become everyone’s cultural possession. But population movements that originated far beyond its shores have also had a significant political and social impact. New, non-Mediterranean populations became temporarily or permanently installed in its cities or employed as cheap labour in the countryside. Many of the African or Asian migrants who reached the Mediterranean in the years either side of 2000 aimed only to set foot on European soil, and then to head northwards, to France, Germany or England, though the big Italian cities have also been a magnet; but it is the Mediterranean members of the European Union who have had to deal with the influx first of all, as numbers swelled. As well as Ceuta, the small islands between Sicily and North Africa – Lampedusa, Pantelleria, Malta – have become favoured entry points. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, berated Italy in May 2009 for sending boatloads of refugees back to Libya. In 2008 36,900 asylum-seekers arrived in Italy, 75 per cent more than in 2007; in 2008 2,775 reached Malta, equivalent to one migrant for every 148 Maltese; but this was the peak in the nine-year period from 2002 to 2010. Indeed, in 2010 the number fell sharply, because Malta benefited from an asylum agreement between Libya and Italy, the intended destination of many migrants, and perhaps because Europe itself seemed less attractive once it was in the grip of an economic crisis.³ The issue is not simply one for the western Mediterranean states: the Dodecanese islands have become a favourite entry point for migrants arriving from Asia by way of Turkey.

One striking feature of this new migration has been the predominance of Muslims, leading to arguments about the construction of mosques – old sensitivities, or indeed prejudices, are still powerful in Andalucia and Sicily, not helped by occasional extremist calls for all formerly Islamic lands, including al-Andalus, to be recovered for a revived caliphate. Against this, there is the old reality of migration: as living standards have improved in western Europe, menial tasks have been offloaded on to the migrants, who can find employment in hotels as chambermaids, waiters or cleaners, or as construction workers building these very hotels. For the one area in which the economy of the Mediterranean has experienced an unprecedented boom during the post-war period is tourism, along with the opportunities it has created for employment. II

In the second half of the twentieth century the Mediterranean, no longer a vital seat of commercial or naval power, found a new vocation: mass tourism.⁴ Mass tourism first took off in the Mediterranean, and it now attracts over 230 million visitors each year.⁵ The temporary migration of millions of northern Europeans, Americans and Japanese in search of sun, or culture, or both, has taken place alongside the more permanent immigration of retired Germans, Britons and Scandinavians who hope to spend their last days in apartments and villas along the Spanish coast or in Majorca, Malta and Cyprus, forming distinctive communities with their own clubs, pubs and beer cellars – even, in Majorca, a political party for Germans.⁶ Unlicensed building and, in the case of northern Cyprus, contested title deeds have not always made retirement to the Mediterranean a happy experience, especially when houses have been summarily demolished by irate Spanish authorities. This southward migration has had serious environmental consequences, placing heavy demands on limited water and energy supplies (notably in Cyprus), and replacing sweeping vistas of coasts and hillsides with poorly designed, monotonous blocks of white concrete houses (notably in Spain).

To understand how the tourist industry took off in the Mediterranean it is necessary to look back at developments well before the Second World War. The age of the Grand Tour, which took English or German travellers to the Bay of Naples and other Mediterranean sites (and sights) met the needs of a small elite. The Mediterranean became more accessible once railways crossed France and once Queen Victoria made Menton and Hyères into fashionable winter resorts in the late nineteenth century. Monumental hotels were built along the promenades at Nice and Cannes, and a small part of the Mediterranean shores, the Côte d’Azur, became a playground for the rich in summer as well as winter, though the rise to prominence of Monte Carlo took longer and followed the creation by the prince of Monaco of a Societe des Bains de Mer that was rather more concerned with gambling than with bathing, which the British promoted for its health-giving properties.⁷ Italian spas began to develop inland at Montecatini, Abano and on the coast at Rimini, serving an Italian clientèle in the main – streams of English tourists, chronicled in the novels of E. M. Forster, arrived in Florence, taking up residence in pensioni for months at a time, but the sea had not yet become a significant attraction for them.⁸ What changed dramatically in the late twentieth century was the number and aims of the visitors, and the ease with which they could reach most corners of the Mediterranean. Tourists replaced travellers.

The expansion of tourism was led by three agents: within the Mediterranean, there were governments – national, regional or municipal – that saw in tourism a way to attract foreign currency and to promote local industry. In Israel, for example, three master-plans were produced in the hope of encouraging tourism, in 1976, 1987 and 1996; this country had the advantage of four tourist constituencies: Jewish visitors, Christian pilgrims, domestic tourists and foreign holidaymakers attracted by the country’s beaches and monuments.

At first the northern invasion was gentle. Rimini possessed an airport as early as 1938. At this period, though, Rimini attracted wealthy clients, air travel was still very costly, and war soon interrupted the trickle of foreign tourists. After the war, Rimini adopted a populist approach.¹² There and elsewhere business blossomed, as travel by air, rail and road became ever cheaper and easier.

But the real transformation occurred with the arrival of the aeroplane.¹³ Cheap, safe, rapid air travel took time to arrive. Here, England was a pioneer, because of the sheer inconvenience of having no direct rail link to the Mediterranean. Britain was a major centre of the aeronautical industry, capitalizing on new aircraft technology developed during the war to construct the efficient, smooth airliners of the late 1950s and early 60s such as the Vickers Viscount and the Britannia. So the British, and later the Germans and Scandinavians, took to the air. In the 1950s Thomson Holidays inaugurated regular flights to Majorca, which was to become the first target of intensive air tourism. Otherwise a journey to Majorca was tediously slow, by train, ship, train, another train (on wider Spanish gauge) and finally ship again.¹⁴ By the late 1960s, with the introduction of faster, smoother jet aircraft such as the BAC 1-11, traffic was burgeoning; and the airport at Palma remains, at least in summertime, one of the busiest in Europe. Between 1960 and 1973 the number of annual visitors to Majorca rose precipitously from 600,000 to 3,600,000.¹⁵ By the start of the twenty-first century, tourism accounted for 84 per cent of the Majorcan economy. Whole concrete towns such as Palma Nova were created for the tourist industry. But the roots of this success went back to Franco’s time. Majorca and Spain (excluding the Canaries) accounted for 25 per cent of British foreign holidaymaking in 1967, and 36 per cent in 1972, while holidays to Italy fell from 16 per cent to 11 per cent.¹⁶ No country could compete with Spain, which was exactly what Franco’s regime wanted: in 1959 a new ‘Stabilization Plan’ for the Spanish economy envisaged not so much the stabilization as the expansion of tourism in Mediterranean Spain, the Balearics and the Canaries.¹⁷ Along the coast of Spain vast swathes of concrete brought a degree of prosperity, but also showed little consideration for the natural beauty of the Costa Brava and the rest of Mediterranean Spain. For the moment, the astonishing cultural assets of Spain – Toledo, Segovia, Cordoba, Granada – took second place to the coastline, which benefited from new access roads, proper lighting and other vital improvements, even if the railways long remained painfully slow.

Travel became democratized as well as globalized. The idea of travelling from Britain to Spain began to appeal to a wide range of people of all backgrounds, aided by the creation of the package holiday. The tourist ceased being an adventurer who navigated a way across the towns and countryside of Mediterranean lands, since it was now possible to choose flights, hotels, meals, even daytrips, from a catalogue in the secure comfort of a sitting room in England or Germany, knowing that representatives who spoke one’s own language would be there to confront any difficulties with the natives. What people wanted was a ‘holiday from the assembly line’.¹⁸ And in case the idea of being abroad seemed too threatening, there was comfort in numbers, and there was the willingness of the natives themselves to accommodate the eccentric needs of foreign visitors: fish and chips for the English, Bratwurst for the Germans.

Those who took Mediterranean holidays were keen to display the fact conspicuously, returning from Spain or Italy with a suitably deep tan. By 1947 French brochures advertising the Côte d’Azur were laying stress on the joys of the beach.¹⁹ Tanned skin became a badge indicating both prosperity and health, since more was known about the advantages of Vitamin D than about the disadvantages of UVA and UVB rays. Pallor was now associated with consumptives and office clerks. The great arbiter of taste, Coco Chanel, decided to make a fashion accessory of her suntan after cruising the Mediterranean in the 1920s, setting a standard for generations of women. However, this interest in bronzed flesh was also associated with changing moral standards.²⁰ Even before the Second World War parts of the body could be displayed on the beach that remained carefully hidden in other public places. The display of the female (and male) body became gradually more extensive. Named after a Pacific atoll used for nuclear testing, the bikini was shown at a fashion show in Paris in 1946, though it took a couple of decades for it to be widely adopted – even its designers expected something like a nuclear reaction among those opposed to it. Over time, it became increasingly daring, so that the navel, originally covered, was invariably exposed.²¹ The supposed immorality of the bikini led both the Italians and the Spaniards to ban them in 1948 (with vocal support from the Vatican), but this could simply not be sustained as foreign tourists flooded into the country. Part of its appeal could be found in the material used to make it by the 1960s, Spandex or Lycra, a blend of synthetic and natural materials that does not retain water. Even when used for one-piece swimsuits, the tight, clinging quality of Lycra revealed more of the female body than conservatives would have wished. Display is an important part of how people make use of swimwear, and the pool is often a place where there is plenty of silent watching and little swimming.²² Thus the aeroplane and the bikini, two inventions as far apart in technology as could be imagined, transformed the relationship between the Mediterranean and the north of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.²³

Naturally, the arrival of tourists in search of a suntan puzzled inhabitants of the Mediterranean for whom the sun was something to be avoided at midday. Puzzlement was compounded by the behaviour of tourists: physical contact between men and women, especially when they were not wearing very much, could shock Greeks, Tunisians and others. In Communist Albania the behaviour of tourists was seen as a sign of western decadence: Enver Hoxha complained about the antics of tourists in neighbouring countries ‘with pants or no pants at all’. Whatever he meant (probably it was an attack on Yugoslav liberalism) he ensured that very few western tourists were allowed to enter, apart from members of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties. The hedonism and permissiveness of north Europeans, especially from the 1960s onwards, affected the attitude of those they encountered, beginning with local young men who were fascinated by what they saw.²⁴ The clash of cultures became even more obvious in the 1980s as it became more common for women to bare their breasts on the beach. The cult of physical beauty in France, with its large cosmetics industry, made it inevitable that Saint-Tropez should be the pioneer in this; Italian and Spanish resorts followed suit. Liberalization for some meant a dilemma for others, and responses varied. A nun charged with turning away vistors to St Mark’s Basilica in Venice who were improperly dressed found the job so stressful that she had a nervous breakdown. In Spain, Ibiza has become well known as a centre for gay tourism, a sign of how far the country has moved since Franco’s time. One country that seized the opportunity to profit from tourism with marked success was Yugoslavia, which determinedly built a reputation for cheap, well-organized hotel-based holidays, particularly favoured by Germans, one speciality being naturist resorts, which the Tito regime had quite cleverly encouraged, knowing that this would appeal specially to the eager adherents of German and Scandinavian Frei-Korps-Kultur seeking an all-over tan.

Cheap flights and cheap alcohol can also ruin tourism: Mallia in Crete and Ayia Napa in Greek Cyprus have acquired horrific reputations, and young British tourists have done most to damage their standing. They are not interested in local culture but want to seize ‘the opportunity to have more fun in a short space of time than might be possible at home’. ‘Fun’ is mainly concerned with sex and alcohol, and in 2003 the British press claimed that both had been actively promoted by representatives of the tour company Club 18–30.²⁵ It is no surprise that in Majorca there have been attempts to move upmarket; for, even if this means the number of tourists will fall, more prosperous visitors will spend more per head. Some areas, such as Apulia and parts of Sardinia, have been consciously marketed as ‘quality’ destinations, and boutique hotels have started to take business away from giant complexes. Tourism has brought prosperity to areas that were previously impoverished and unproductive. Yet the environmental price has been very high. The strain on water resources, the contribution to carbon emissions from air-conditioning units, let alone aeroplanes, and pollution of the sea close to hotel complexes have all contributed to the deterioration of the Mediterranean environment. Local traditions have also suffered, as festivals have become commercialized: the long moribund Venetian carnival was reinvented and marketed as the high point of the Venetian calendar – it is no coincidence that it falls in a lean season when the city used to be empty of tourists. The impact of the media on demand can be detected in Kephalonia, promoted after the publication of Louis de Bernières’s bestseller Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or in the Greek islands after the runaway success of the film Mamma Mia in 2008.²⁶

For long the Mediterranean was almost the exclusive beneficiary of this expansion of mass summer tourism, along with Portugal and the Canary Islands; only in the 1990s did long-haul holidays to Cuba, Florida or the Dominican Republic become significant competitors in the mass market. The late 1990s also saw a very substantial expansion of short holidays, ‘city breaks’, as price wars among airlines resulted in the creation of budget airlines, led by British and Irish entrepreneurs. Irish-owned Ryanair developed hubs in Britain, Belgium, Germany and Italy, becoming Europe’s largest airline. These airlines appealed not just to the price-conscious but to those with holiday homes in southern France, Tuscany or Spain. Alongside air travel, sea travel has been boosted, sometimes cynically, by shipping companies arguing that a cruise is more environmentally friendly than a flight. Dubrovnik is so overwhelmed by cruise ships that traffic police are employed in high season to control the flow of tour groups through the old city.

Tourism in the Mediterranean is not, of course, just for Europeans. Two ‘invasions’ from further afield have been particularly significant: the American and the Japanese. Americans were far from unknown in the watering-holes of the Mediterranean before the Second World War (D. H. Lawrence visited the Etruscan tombs with an American friend), but the inclusion of historical monuments in Italy, Greece, southern France and Egypt on the tourist circuit once again reflects ease of movement as cheap fares and elaborate communications networks made the Mediterranean easily accessible by air from the other side of the Atlantic. The Japanese have sought the explanation for the economic successes of western Europe in European culture and history; in addition, these contacts have accelerated the already rapid westernization of Japan. Japanese visitors have waxed and waned as the economy of Japan has expanded and contracted. Another constraint on tourism has been political turmoil: the once flourishing resorts of the beautiful Dalmatian coast have recovered slowly from the disintegration of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. However, as with the trade routes of the medieval Mediterranean, so also with the holiday trails of the modern tourist: if Croatia or Israel is unsafe, then other places gain a comparative advantage – Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, and so on. III

The fall of Communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union eased some tensions, because Moscow was no longer trying to create a vigorously anti-American faction based in Syria, Libya and other allies, even if these countries remained generally hostile to Israel, which, for its part, seemed half-hearted in its offers of peace and reluctant to let go of its settlements in the West Bank, despite the evacuation of Gaza in 2005 (after which the territory fell under the rule of the Islamist Hamas movement). Strong military and economic ties binding Turkey and Israel together disintegrated in 2010, nominally over an Israeli attack on ships bringing aid to Gaza while it was under a strict Israeli blockade; but it was also clear that Turkey was seeking a new mission, which some defined as ‘new Ottomanism’, within the Middle East, and that this was partly the consequence of rebuffs from the European Union, some of whose most powerful members opposed Turkish entry, and none of whom could offer a solution to the Cyprus question that would satisfy the Turks.

The search for greater stability within the Mediterranean has increasingly turned away from political rivalries towards ecological issues that can be addressed only if all the nations of the Mediterranean agree to transcend political differences and work together. Whether the series of initiatives launched at the start of the twenty-first century will have any effect depends on a willingness to limit economic growth so as to preserve the Mediterranean environment for future generations. Beginning with the ‘Barcelona Process’ in 1995, the European Union has attempted to steer all the Mediterranean countries towards common political, economic and cultural objectives. Out of the agreements of 1995 there evolved in 2008 a Union pour la Mediterranee in which the entire EU and every state in the Mediterranean participates. Although the first objective, political stability, seems to be blocked by continuing tensions, notably between Israel and its neighbours, the inclusion of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Lebanon in the Mediterranean Union is intended to provide a framework within which they can begin tentatively to recognize common interests rather than differences. Among economic objectives, the idea of a pan-Mediterranean free trade area conjures up images of the great days of Roman or early Islamic trade across the Mediterranean. Its principal drawback is that it is seen by Mediterranean states outside the EU, especially Turkey, as a weak substitute for membership of the EU itself, and some European politicians who have opposed Turkish entry into Europe, such as President Sarkozy of France, have been noticeably enthusiastic about the Mediterranean Union. Others have looked forward to the day when the EU will become a Euro-Mediterranean Union offering membership to all the Mediterranean lands, but there are quite enough problems to resolve concerning political rivalries and economic disparities within the Mediterranean, not to mention the future of Europe, to make this sound a Utopian dream – a severe warning against over-hasty integration was provided early in 2010 by the dramatic collapse of government finances in Greece, a member of the Eurozone that irresponsibly spent far beyond its means. And a consequence of the Greek crisis was that the Chinese government was able to purchase one of the docks at Peiraieus later that year, giving the People’s Republic easier access within the Mediterranean for its industrial goods – a sign of how much China has changed since it dreamed of naval bases in Hoxha’s Albania. Other very worthy objectives include a solar energy plan and the cleaning of the seas, where pollution and over-exploitation have wreaked havoc with (for instance) the tunny-fishing industry – three-quarters of tuna fished in the Mediterranean go to Japan. Yet in March 2010 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in Doha refused to act when it was clear that over-fishing, in and beyond the Mediterranean, threatens the bluefin tuna with extinction.

On the cultural front, results will be easier to show: a Euro-Mediterranean University has been founded in Slovenia, and ever more intense cultural exchanges are proposed between Mediterranean countries. The aim, of course, is to break down barriers – to recreate, within a fresh mould, the ‘integrated’ Mediterranean of past times and to recover some elements of the lost convivencia of Jew, Christian and Muslim. Yet what is most striking about the Union for the Mediterranean is that most of its members, who include Finland, Estonia, Slovakia, Holland and Ireland, are remote from the Mediterranean. The centre of gravity of Europe still lies in the north, despite the accession to the EU of a few more Mediterranean countries (all small) at the start of the twenty-first century. This confirms the impression that the Mediterranean has lost its place at the centre of the western world, a process that began as early as 1492 when new opportunities beckoned in the Atlantic; and, early in the twenty-first century, it has become clear that the great economic powerhouse of the future will be China. In the worldwide economy of the twenty-first century, an integrated Mediterranean has local rather than global significance. Ease of contact across the globe – physical contact by air, virtual contact through the Web – means that political, commercial and cultural contacts can be sustained rapidly across vast distances. In this sense, the world has become one big Mediterranean, and the Fifth Mediterranean is the last Mediterranean in which, in any meaningful sense, the world has revolved around the Great Sea.

1. Mnajdra in Malta is the site of several temples from the fourth and third millennium BC, closely packed together, beside steep cliffs overlooking the sea; the large central temple here was the last to be built. The Maltese temples are the oldest large-scale buildings in the Mediterranean.

2. The 16 cm-long ‘sleeping lady’ preserved in the Archaeological Museum, Valletta, may represent an earth goddess, or is perhaps a personification of Malta and Gozo, with the humps representing the two islands.

3. Most Cycladic figurines are female and may portray companions of the dead, whether servants or spirits in the next world.

4. A female head from Keros in the Cycladic islands, made from local marble in the first half of the third millennium BC. Its purity and simplicity are deceptive, since it would have been highly coloured.

5. Manufactured in Crete around 1500 BC, this vase is one of several Minoan pots which uses the body and arms of an octopus to create a fluid and naturalistic design, breaking away from Egyptian and Syrian models to form a distinctive island style.

6. Fresco of c. 1420 BC from the tomb of Pharaoh’s vizier Rekhmire in Upper Egypt. One of Rekhmire’s functions was to arrange the arrival of tribute from neighbouring lands, portrayed here and boastfully labelled ‘every land is subject to His Majesty’. Some tribute, such as jars of oil or wine, seems to come from Crete, other objects and animals from lands to the south.

7. Akrotiri on Thera was a major centre of trade and shipping before its destruction in a massive volcanic eruption in c. 1500 BC. This remarkable fresco from the sixteenth century BC shows the port and oared vessels bound for or returning from a Mediterranean voyage.

8. A gold death mask from Mycenae, from around 1500 BC, buried in a princely grave. ‘Mycenae rich in gold’, as Homer called it, was ruled by Greek-speaking warrior princes who eventually fell under the spell of Minoan culture. These masks may imitate the infinitely grander death masks of the Pharaohs.

9. Deprived of the gold with which their Aegean forebears had covered the faces of the dead, the early Philistines moulded clay images of their leaders. This face forms part of a sarcophagus found at Beth She’an in northern Israel.

10. The twelfth-century Warrior Vase from Mycenae shows a troop of soldiers wearing horned helmets typical of the invaders and mercenaries the Egyptians called the Shardana. Other parts of their equipment bear comparison with Homer’s descriptions of his heroes’ armour.

11. The Philistines appear on the walls of the early twelfth-century BC temple of Madinat Habu in Upper Egypt, whose friezes celebrate victories attributed to Rameses III over the so-called Sea Peoples.

12. In the late ninth century BC Phoenician merchants established a settlement at Nora in southern Sardinia. They commemorated the dedication of a temple with one of the earliest inscriptions in the Semitic alphabet to survive in the western Mediterranean.

13. This stone tablet or stele, engraved in Carthage around 400 BC, is thought to show a priest, identifiable from his distinctive headdress, carrying a child victim to the place of sacrifice.

14. A model of a Phoenician ship, converted into a lamp and dedicated in AD 232 in the temple of Zeus Beithmares in what is now Lebanon. Although late in date, it gives a good idea of the appearance of Phoenician and Carthaginian ships.

15. Phoenician silver coin portraying a Phoenician ship and the sea monster known to the Greeks as the hippocamp.

16. A battle between Greek foot soldiers or hoplites depicted on the Chigi Vase, found near Veii, north of Rome, and dating from around 600 BC. Prodigious quantities of often magnificent Corinthian pottery were acquired by Etruscan princes.

17. Panel from the bronze gates of the Assyrian royal palace at Balawat in northern Iraq, ninth century BC. The Phoenicians bring tribute across the Mediterranean and overland to the Assyrian court.

18. Late sixth-century BC krater decorated in black figure by the Athenian artist Exekias and exported to Vulci in Etruria, where it was discovered in a tomb. The bowl, used as a shallow wine cup, illustrates the story of the capture of the wine god Dionysos by Etruscan pirates, and the transformation of the pirates into dolphins.

19. Tomb of the Hunting and Fishing, Tarquinia, late sixth century BC. The delightful scenes on this Etruscan fresco betray strong influence from Ionian Greek art.

20. Tablet from Marsiliana d’Albegna, Etruria, seventh century BC. Probably used for teaching the alphabet, this tablet provides the earliest evidence for the importation of the archaic Greek alphabet into Etruria; the letters were written from right to left, as in Phoenician, and the alphabet contains several letters such as delta that were dropped from the Etruscan script because the sound did not exist in Etruscan speech.

21. ‘This is the temple and this is the place of the statue which the king Thefarie Velianas has dedicated to Uni-Astarte …’ One of three gold tablets discovered in 1964 at Pyrgoi on the Etruscan coast, two in Etruscan and one in Phoenician, recording a dedication made by the king of Caere at the end of the sixth century BC.

22. Following his naval victory over the Etruscans at Kyma near Naples in 474 BC, the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse dedicated an enemy pot-helmet at the shrine of Zeus in Olympia inscribed: ‘Hieron, son of Deinomenes and the Syracusans and Zeus: Tyrsenian from Kyma’.

23. The fortified tower (nuraghe) of Orolo in central Sardinia is one of the best-preserved examples of the prehistoric castles that once dotted the island in their thousands; many, such as this one, were surrounded by villages. Built between 1500 and 900 BC, it was occupied for many centuries thereafter.

24. The early Sards exploited the minerals on their island and were gifted copper workers. This bronze boat, made around 600 BC, may have been used as a lamp. Other examples have been found as far away as Vetulonia in Etruria.

25. Periandros ruled Corinth from 627 to 585 BC and actively promoted its economy. His reputation as a harsh tyrant was tempered by praise for his wisdom and justice.

26. A posthumous representation of Alexander the Great as the sun god. Alexander visited the temple of the Egyptian sun god Amun Ra in 331 BC and wanted the Egyptians to worship him as that god. After his death, ancient Egyptian and Greek religious ideas fused in Egypt during the rule of the Ptolemies.

27. The most famous ancient Iberian sculpture is the ‘Dama de Elche’, a bust of a priestess or goddess wearing elaborate jewellery, from the fourth century BC. It shows Greek influence, but also bears close comparison with other life size sculptures left by the remarkable civilization of the ancient Iberians.

28. The cult of Sarapis was promoted by Ptolemy I of Egypt. The god was an eclectic fusion of the bull god Apis, the god of rebirth Osiris and several Greek gods, including Zeus and Dionysos.

29. In the third century BC the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, built a personal empire in Spain and issued coins which show either him or the god Melqart wreathed in Greek style; probably the intention was to identify Hamilcar with the Punic god, thought to be the same as the Greek Herakles.

30. Bronze coin of Nero (d. AD 68) celebrating the grain trade. The goddess Ceres holds ears of wheat and faces Annona (‘Harvest’), who holds a cornucopia; also visible are an altar on which a grain measure has been placed, and the stern of a grain ship.

31. Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, was a cultured though ruthless ruler of Egypt. Her affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony eventually brought disaster on her dynasty and led to the Roman occupation of her country.

32. Coin marking the completion of a new harbour at Ostia, from the reign of Nero. The miniature portrayal of different kinds of ship, observed from various angles, is striking.

33. A large Roman warship or quinquireme, ready for battle at Actium in 31 BC. This relief comes from Praeneste, now Palestrina, south-east of Rome.

34. This striking fresco showing ships coming and going from a harbour near Naples, possibly Puteoli, decorated the walls of a house at Stabiae and was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

35. Sixth-century mosaic from the basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Ravenna, showing the Byzantine fleet at Classis, Ravenna’s outport, and its impressive harbour fortifications.

36. Cornice from the synagogue at Ostia, showing the seven-branched candlestick (menorah) that was one of the symbols of Judaism in the late Roman empire. The synagogue remained in use between the first and fourth centuries.

37. An inscription from the second century commemorates the building of the Ark for the scrolls of the Law in the Ostia synagogue, at the expense of Mindis Faustos; the inscription is mainly in Greek, the daily language of the Jews of Rome, together with a few Latin words.

alt=image>

38. At the start of the twelfth century the magnificent altarpiece known as the Pala d’Oro, or Golden Standard, was installed on the high altar of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. This panel shows the ship carrying the relics of St Mark sailing towards Venice after the saint’s bones were stolen from Alexandria in 828.

39. In a photograph from 1885 Amalfi can be seen clinging to the steep peninsula which was home to a lively community of early medieval merchants. It was little more than a village even at the height of its influence in the eleventh century, when its ships were run up on the beach, as here. It remains a tiny town, though the convent higher up the slopes has now become a luxury hotel.

40. The highly glazed basins (bacini) that adorn the outside of several Romanesque churches in Pisa would have glistened in the sun, proclaiming the success of Pisan merchants in penetrating Muslim lands where know how for their manufacture existed. This bacino, probably Majorcan, shows a Muslim ship under sail, accompanied by a smaller boat.

41. Fonduks were generally arcaded buildings on two floors built around a quadrangle. The royal fonduk in crusader Acre, now called the Inn of the Columns (Khan al-‘Umdan), where taxes on merchandise were collected, was rebuilt by the Turks but preserves its form well. The Italian merchants possessed their own fonduks in other parts of the city.

42. Four magnificent horses of ancient Greek workmanship adorned the hippodrome in Constantinople and formed part of the loot carried away by the Venetians after they stormed the city during the Fourth Crusade. Until they began to deteriorate, they stood proudly above the entrance to St Mark’s Basilica.

43. The Muslim scholar and prince Idrisi, from Ceuta, served the Norman kings of Sicily as their geographer. Although twelfth-century manuscripts of his work do not survive, this late-medieval world map is probably a copy of one drawn by Idrisi. South is at the top and so the Mediterranean is in the bottom right segment, with the Adriatic cutting deep into the European landmass.

44. Detail of an early fourteenth-century portolan chart drawn in Majorca. Sardinia stands in the centre, and Majorca is flamboyantly distinguished by the flag of its Catalan king. Place-names crowd the coasts.

45. Thirteenth-century wall-paintings showing the capture of the City of Majorca in 1229 by the troops of King James I of Aragon. These events were also celebrated in King James’s Book of Deeds, written in Catalan, the first royal autobiography from the Middle Ages.

46. Aigues-Mortes, meaning ‘dead waters’, was founded on the edge of the Carmargue as a base for French trade into the Mediterranean and as a departure point for crusaders bound for the East. Most of its well-preserved buildings date from the start of the fourteenth century, by which time it was functioning as the outport of its former rival Montpellier, which lay under Majorcan rule.

47. Genoa is squeezed between the Ligurian Alps and the sea, and Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle printed in 1493 conveys well the mass of buildings, towers and churches clustered together beside the port, including (top centre) the imposing gateway built when the city was under threat from the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the mid-twelfth century.

48. Dubrovnik seen from the south-east, with its imposing line of fifteenth-century walls. The harbour, just visible, lay on the other side and one of the tall buildings on the right was the grain store. The town is bisected by the street known as Placa or Stradun, ending on the right next to the weighing-house or Sponza Palace, which now houses the city’s rich archives; the Jewish quarter lay to the left of the palace.

49. In the fifteenth century, Manises in the Valencian hinterland was the great centre for the production of glazed ceramics with lustre decoration. This bowl bears the coat-of-arms of the degli Agli family of Florence; Italian patricians were keen purchasers of these Hispano-Moresque wares. Inspired by Moorish technology, Christian potters came to dominate production, but there were some joint workshops where Muslims and Christians worked side by side.

50. This votive model of a cargo ship, a unique survival from the Middle Ages, originally stood in a church in Mataro in Catalonia. Nearly 120 cm long and over 50 cm broad, it dates from around 1420 and is made partly of mulberry wood from the Mediterranean, its hull constructed out of planks laid flush, in Mediterranean style.

51. The magnificent Exchange (llotja) in Valencia, built between 1483 and 1498. This hall with its soaring columns was used for the transaction of business, while in another room the commercial court of Valencia sat. The inscription glorifying honest trade can be seen running around the cornice.

52. The code of maritime law known as the Consulate of the Sea determined commercial law in Valencia and among Catalan merchants overseas. A printed edition appeared in 1494. This earlier manuscript copy portrays King Alfonso the Magnanimous (d. 1458) surrounded by his courtiers, a reminder that the king and the merchants worked closely together to create a political and commercial empire in the Mediterranean.

53. Mehmet II, Ottoman sultan, known as ‘the Conqueror’ (Fatih) in recognition of his capture of Constantinople. Fascinated by Italian culture, he summoned the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini to his court, where this portrait was painted not long before Mehmet’s death in 1481.

54. At the end of his life, Mehmet launched ambitious expeditions against Latin Christendom, sending his fleet to Otranto in southern Italy, which was occupied, but failing in 1480 to capture Rhodes. Here, a French miniaturist celebrates the defeat of the Turks, forced to come to terms with the Knights Hospitallers, whose flags can be seen along the walls and atop the maritime fortress.

55. Hisr also known as Hayrettin and as Barbarossa (d. 1546), was one of the most ruthless Barbary corsairs; based in Algiers, he launched attacks on Minorca and Italy and wintered in Toulon at the invitation of King Francis I of France. This painting was the work of Nakkep Reis Haydar, who had himself served at sea.

56. Andrea Doria came from one of the most eminent Genoese families. He entered the service of the king of France but then abandoned him in 1528 for Charles V. He was a tough rival to Hayrettin Barbarossa and scored significant victories, such as the recovery of Coron in southern Greece in 1532.

57. Hayrettin commanded an Ottoman fleet sent to Tunis after a succession struggle broke out in 1534. Charles V intervened and recaptured Tunis in 1535; the Spaniards built a fort in the Lac de Tunis near Goleta that still stands. This cartoon for a series of tapestries shows the Spanish capture of Goleta.

58. About 150,000 Spaniards of Muslim descent, the Moriscos, were expelled between 1609 and 1614, even though some protested that they were devout Christians. This painting shows their departure by sea from Vinaròs, a flourishing port north of Valencia City.

59. Venetian painting recording the victory of a small Venetian squadron over seventeen Turkish ships off Crete in May 1661. By this time the Venetians had lost the second and third cities of Crete and were holding on to Candia (Heraklion) by their fingernails; they lost the island in 1669.

60. French assault on Mahon in British-held Minorca, 1756. St Philip’s Fort, guarding the entrance to the largest natural harbour in the Mediterranean, can be seen in the foreground. France saw the British presence close to Toulon as a direct threat to its Mediterranean fleet.

61. The execution of Admiral Byng on 14 March 1757 on the quarterdeck of HMS Monarch. Byng was the scapegoat for the British government and Admiralty, which had sent him on an impossible mission to relieve Minorca with inadequate numbers of ships and men. As Voltaire famously said, he was executed pour encourager les autres.

62. Admiral Fyodor Ushakov (1744–1817), commander of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, who captured the Ionian islands from France. In 2000 he became the patron saint of the Russian navy.

63. Viscount Hood, commander of the British fleet in the Mediterranean from 1793. Like Nelson, he was the son of a clergyman. Under his command the British occupied Toulon and brought Corsica under the British Crown.

64. The German nobleman Ferdinand von Hompesch was the last Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, or Knights of St John, to rule Malta. Elected in July 1797, his rule lasted only a year before Napoleon seized the island.

65. Stephen Decatur was the first American naval hero, and his name is still borne by US warships. In 1803 and 1804 he led celebrated attacks on Tripoli harbour in Libya; his acts of bravery symbolized the victory of American courage over the brute strength of the Barbary pirates.

66. Port Said was a new town built to service the Suez Canal. In this photograph from 1880 ships wait to enter the Canal. The ship at centre left is an ironclad vessel combining sail and steam power.

67. Trieste, with its mixed population of German-speakers, Italian-speakers and Slavspeakers, of Christians and Jews, gave the Austro-Hungarian empire access to the Mediterranean. This photograph of around 1890 shows the quayside belonging to Austrian Lloyd, the city’s most important navigation company, whose leading shareholders were drawn from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

68. The Grand Square, also known as Place Mehmet Ali, in Alexandria in the 1910s. The square neatly expressed the wish to make Alexandria into a European city perched next to Africa. Here stood the multinational court that dealt with commercial cases, and here Colonel Nasser delivered a rousing speech in 1956 announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

69. Italian attempts to portray the occupation of Turkish Libya as part of a European civilizing mission were reinforced by illustrations such as this one from a French magazine of October 1911. The mere presence of Italian officers, inspired by the goddess bearing the flame of liberty, is sufficient to scare away the cowardly and primitive natives.

70. The refusal of the French navy to join the British fleet or to withdraw to neutral waters led Churchill to authorize the attack on the French warships moored at Mers el-Kebir in October 1940. Resentment at British actions not only led to a final break in diplomatic relations but soured relations between the defeated French and Great Britain throughout much of the Second World War.

71. In July 1943 British troops landed in Sicily in the first stage of a campaign that would take Allied armies slowly up the Italian peninsula. Feint attacks on Sardinia had led the Germans to imagine that it rather than Sicily was the intended target.

72. Ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe, seen docking at Haifa on 7 October 1947 after its seizure by the British authorities. Many of those attempting to reach Palestine were sent to camps in Cyprus.

73. Charles de Gaulle, having led Free French forces during the Second World War, seized power in 1958 as the Third Republic grappled with the problem of French rule over Algeria, which he initially promised to maintain. Here he is seen visiting Algeria in June 1958, to the delight of the French settlers.

74. From the 1960s onwards, Spain exploited the rise of the package holiday and then came to regret some of its effects: concrete hotels, restaurants and bars on the Costas, along with impossibly crowded beaches, such as this one at Lloret de Mar in Catalonia. Similar scenes now regularly appear in parts of France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Israel.

75. By the end of the twentieth century the Mediterranean lands of the European Union had become a tightly guarded frontier across which the movement of migrants from Africa and Asia was strictly controlled. Here a group of migrants from Africa is trying to land on Spanish soil near the Straits of Gibraltar.