In this volume, the authors celebrate Patrizio Collini’s distinguished career as a professor and as an essayist, highlighting the significant impact he left in the fields of German Studies and Comparative Literature along the Florence-Bonn-Paris axis, while also paying homage to Venice, his great love and refuge as a Tuscan scholar. In a continuous dialogue between literature and the arts (both figurative and scenic), the collected essays, scientific contributions, reminiscences, and narratives collected in this miscellany wander through German and European history from the Goethezeit to the fall of the Berlin Wall, expressing Patrizio Collini’s diverse research interests: the Germanist, the expert of Romanticism, but also the bibliophile and the music enthusiast, and above all, the flâneur. This volume invites readers to meander through the avenues of great literature, rediscovering the pleasure of leisurely exploration and perhaps even the pleasure that may lie in possessing a book – or being possessed by one.