Calma, lusso e naturalezza. La Costa Brava e la Costa Azzurra: narrazioni e raffigurazioni di artisti e letterati a confronto, tra Ottocento e Novecento

On the northern coast of the western Mediterranean, between Catalonia and Liguria, the simultaneous presence of small towns, breath-taking views overlooking the sea and wooded mountains in the hinterland became a figurative and literary topos, cultivated in the 19th and 20th centuries by writers, artists and intellectuals from all backgrounds. Yet, not all the Mediterranean coasts were (and are) identical. For reasons having to do with the different human perceptions – in the sense of perceiving, by tourists, but also of being perceived, by the natives – these places were narrated with different characters and vocations, sometimes in contrast with their neighbours. The cases, on the one hand, of the Costa Brava and, on the other, of the Côte d'Azur configured two different approaches to the cultural landscape of the Mediterranean coasts, at the dawn of the golden age of mass tourism.