While the first session of the symposium focuses on the ideas and the writings of some of Europe’s foremost philosophers, the second and third sessions look at how policies and practices of toleration actually developed in the eighteenth century. Highlighting a widespread pessimism in the Age of Enlightenment towards the possibility that toleration may actually be rooted within European society, Ernst Wangermann considers whether, and how far, such perception is related to the ‘ambiguities’ inherent in the concept of toleration. To do so, he examines the slow and ambiguous progress towards consistent and comprehensive toleration in the Habsburg Monarchy and also in Great Britain, often put forward at the time as models of a tolerant society. The second and third papers are linked to one another. The authors, Olga Katsiardi-Hering and Ikaros Mantouvalos, examine tolerance policies in the Habsburg Empire towards the people of South-Eastren Europe in the eighteenth century. Their main argument is that such practices fostered an image of Central Europe as a new ‘patria’ for the people of South-Eastern Europe and, with it, helped their participation in a dialogue that led to a shared image of Europe.