With one coast in Europe, one in Asia and another in Africa, the Mediterranean can often seem to us a kind of natural border between different peoples. But a sea like this can have (and historically has had) a real convening power, as the large settlements along its coastlines trade and influence each other over the centuries.

I liked the idea that a body of water should serve to unite the cities of its coast, rather than divide its various nations. We may not travel by sea the way we once did, but the role of an inland sea in still very interesting to me, as a place where trading cultures can mix and fuse perhaps more naturally than anywhere else. That's why the rest of the continental world (inland European and African cities and nations) are omitted here - imagining the Med as a maritime community in its own right.