2024/12/17 by Scotti, Massimo
paper · doi:10.13138/2723-9020/3575
If The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764) inaugurated the Gothic fashion in the novel, between the 18th and 19th centuries, two TV series brought the Mediterranean Gothic back into vogue between the 1960s and 1970s. They are the French Belphégor ou le fantôme du Louvre (1965) and the Italian Il segno del comando (1971), two television masterpieces in which some ancient suggestions are confronted with a historical present poor in myths and depth, all projected towards a ‘modern’ that flattens reality and erases the charm of places where travellers’ memories have long preserved a past full of mysteries.