The letters collected in the Europe collection provide not only interesting information about Burckhardt’s personal relationships, but also outline the main events occurred in Europe in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. With these letters, modern readers observe European historical events through the eyes of erstwhile contemporaries, and realise to what degree an episode used to influence everyday life.

The core collection is constituted by a group of letters describing the most significant moments of the Italian Risorgimento.
Thanks to the diplomatic negotiations with Napoleon III, Camillo Benso, count of Cavour, was able to guarantee French support against Austria, during the Second War of Independence of the Sardinia Kingdom (1859). The Austrian defeat and the Villafranca Armistice were followed by Garibaldi’s expedition and by the liberation of the Southern and Central Italy (1860-1861).
The episodes in these years are extensively described in the letters sent to Burckhardt. On August 21^st 1859, the French Republican Jean Baptiste Adolphe Charras, one of Giuseppe Mazzini’s friends, sends Burckhardt from Zurich a copy of the open letter he had addressed to Napoleon III. Adhering to the suggestion of Viktor Hugo and other intellectuals, Charras, then in exile, had criticised the French Emperor’s decision to grant amnesty to political opponents. Besides, believing that many exiles had committed no fault, Charras also denounced a massacre perpetrated a few months before. Later, during the summer of 1860, Charras was convened in Genoa and offered to command the volunteers’ corps in the march on the Papal State. However, he refused the position, pleading his inadequacy in Italian language.
Another letter, dated December 1^st 1859, was sent by the German collector and art dealer Johann Matthias Commeter, recently moved to Rome: specifically, he provides an account of his journey in Central Italy. In this document, where evidences of the popular enthusiasm for Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele are clear, Commeter narrates the impossibility to visit Forlì, Rimini and Ravenna, due to the Garibaldi fever.
On May 7^th 1860, during the Spedizione dei Mille, Garibaldi stopped at Talamone, in the Grosseto province. On June 15^th of the same year, Franz Olivier Graf von Jenison, a Bavarian politician and diplomat who spent the latter part of his life in Italy, writes to Burckhardt from Florence, expressing his desire to see him, and disclosing his intention to remain in Tuscany, since historical events there had not put people’s life on the line, yet. Two more letters by Commeter and another one by Jenison, sent in 1861, inform the readers about Italian current events after Garibaldi’s expedition. In particular, Jenison’s letter, sent on January 22^nd 1861, is noteworthy: here Jenison expresses some doubts regarding the blind confidence in the axiom “l’Italia farà da sé”, as well as about the general enthusiasm of the Italian youth. Jenison concludes asking Burckhardt whether the nationalism could help European development and culture.
The conflict between France and Prussia started with the war declaration of Napoleon III, on July 19^th 1870, ending with the Treaty of Frankfurt. France heavily lost the war. On the contrary, thanks to the victory over France and to the diplomatic efforts of Otto von Bismarck, the Southern German States began the negotiations with Prussia, in order to enter in the German Confederation. A month after the outbreak of the conflict, the jurist Friedrich Preen writes to Burckhardt from Bruchsal conveying information about the German mobilisation against France. This document offers a clear statement of the widespread patriotism rebirth in Germany.
In September of the same year, Preen sends another letter with interesting observations on the consequences of the German Revolution, of the Franco-Prussian war and of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. After France numerous defeats and the German siege on Paris, the Armistice between France and Prussia was finally signed in January, 28^th 1871. On March of the same year, Preen expresses his joy for the end of the Franco-Prussian war and sends Burckhardt some observations on the war and on the future relations between the two countries.

Other historical episodes find place in the European correspondence to Jacob Burckhardt. On May 1^st 1890, the worldwide workers demonstrated for the reduction of working hours per day. One year later in Rome, during the first anniversary of this manifestation, workers and troops clashed close to S. Giovanni in Laterano and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Thanks to the letter of the Italian conservative politician Pietro Desiderio Pasolini, sent on May 2^nd 1891, readers get straight to the heart of these episodes and learn about the wounding of the patriot and anarchist Amilcare Cipriani, who had been a political opponent of Pasolini in Ravenna.
The letter addressed to Burckhardt by Gustav von Bezold from Monaco, is extremely engaging for European cultural history. The sender describes how, during the art historians conference held in Nuremberg on September 1893, it was decided to institute abroad some research centres, provided with libraries specialised in Art History. In particular, aware of Burckhardt’s interests for Renaissance Art History, Bezold writes about the future foundation of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence.
Other letters in this collection report on other crucial episodes on Italian history. The date September 20^th 1870 marked the end of the material power of the Church and the birth of Rome as capital. In 1895, in occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the breach through the Walls of Porta Pia, Francesco Crispi encouraged the demonstrations taking place in many Italian cities. In his letter of November 1^st 1895, Pietro Desiderio Pasolini describes the march on Porta Pia dated September 20. In this document Pasolini criticises the anticlerical policy, in particular since the Church, in his opinion, did not resist to the Italian State.
Finally, there is a moving letter sent on August 6^th 1897 by the Swiss art historian Otto Markwart, expressing his desire to see his teacher, by then old and sick, one more time in Basel. In his letter Markwart compares his trip in Italy to the one in Paris. Though not despising the French capital, he expresses an unconditional love for Italy. Besides, Markwart adds that the following year he would have lectured in the French Revolution, reason why he had already started reading the Jacques Mallet du Pan’s Considérations sur la nature de la révolution de France.

Obviously, the interest for history and for Burckhardt’s contemporary events is the salient feature of the letters included in the Europe collection.