Passing through a series of aggregating factors (the ethnic bond, the relationship with the territory, the language, the memory, the norms of coexistence incarnate in the institutions), the author traces the historical story of the European peoples and the process of formation of Their national identities through some fundamental turning points: the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Christianization of the barbarian invaders and the birth of the Medieval society, the Constitution of the absolute states and their Democratisation. A fresco that allows on the one hand the motives of “Italian diversity”, on the other to understand the distinctive traits of European civilisation, in the foreshortening of relations with other great civilizations.