‘Europe and the Roma’ describes the ‘fascination and fear’ which have marked Europeans’ response to the Romani presence. Countless composers, artists and writers have responded to Romani culture and to fantasies thereof. Their projections onto a group whose illiteracy and marginalisation gave it so little direct voice of its own has always been a very uneasy mixture of the inspired, the patronising and the frighteningly ignorant. But it also shows the link between cultural violence, social discrimination and racist policies that paved the way for the genocide of the Roma.