The purpose of this panel is to investigate the ways in which historians and intellectuals reconstructed European history and sough a European identity in the first half of the twentieth century. Vittorio Dini, in his paper, will try to grasp the relationship between notions of Europe, the idea of nation and the concept of civilisation in the writings of German and French historians and authors, placing a particular emphasis on their being ‘political myths’. Paola Cattani will take into account the works of authors such as Paul Valéry, Johan Huizinga, Julien Benda and Hermann von Keyserling in order to explore the issue of “narrating Europe” from a linguistic viewpoint. Annamaria Ducci intends to shed new light on European narratives through the lenses of the visual arts, taking into account a series ‘art histories’ written in France in the period between the two world wars. Martin Hurcombe will investigate the strength of Latinity in shaping nationalist and universalistic discourses in France, considering how it contributed to the narrative of an alternative version of Europe founded on the division between the Nordic and Mediterranean worlds. In his paper, David Bryan will explore narratives of Europe within the Blue Division, both as they were constructed from above and as they were experienced from below by the front line troops, and in particular the tensions between Spanish nationalism and the internationalism of European narratives and experiences.