Umberto Eco was the father of semiotics, a scholar of mass culture, and author of essays for the academic elite as well as global bestsellers for a wider audience. But he was also an outspoken advocate for intercultural understanding and an intellectual who sought to define European identity beyond the economic and political. In an interview, with journalist Gianni Riotta, he once said: “The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.
