The Mediterranean region is nothing more than an extended periphery around the middle, the sea. The horizontal creates the dominant and provocative visual dimension. . No wonder, then, that the same narrative of the manmade vertical features prominently in all of the three world religions native to the Mediterranean: „Go forth! Let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth!“ A young member of the oldest Jewish Diaspora on the African continent – on the Tunisian holiday island Djerba – recites from the Torah. The story of the Tower of Babel expresses the diversity of the Mediterranean region as if it were legitimatised by common origins. But it also leads from the horizontal emptiness of the sea to her shores, and on to architecture that attempts to control visuality with its vertical expansion.