At a good PACE - Paths Across Cultures in Europe PACE involves about 60 students from two different schools: an Italian Liceo Scientifico and a French General Secondary School. Our project tries to demonstrate how literature can become a source of inspiration for high school students, a means to express feelings and emotions, a tool to vent anxieties. First of all, the project aims at bringing down the barriers that usually hinder a confident approach to the study of poems, novels, drama through the use of an innovative teaching method. Our method, starting with the close reading of texts, immediately introduces a practical aspect (read and do), as it involves students' artistic abilities such as sketching, drawing, painting, etching and acting. Each student will find the most natural/suitable means of expression among those proposed, so that the basic issue of anxiety or dislike connected to the study of foreign literature can be something of the past, transformed into a positive energy that will encourage the students to give their personal interpretations, points of view on the works studied, whilst comparing them to those expressed by the author and by the other students (peer mentoring). The initial responses will be valued. The discovery of what a student likes, his interests and what moves him (and why) is an essential part of education. Literary appreciation is about deciding what matters the most to an individual. Following the steps of some famous writers and poets, exploring the territories to which the literary works are linked will give a further insight into the fantastic world of literature. The study of context can give a new and sharper focus to the words on a page. By putting a poem or text in context, the students will be encouraged to develop their critical and analytical skills in order to review their first impressions. The proximity of both schools to famous theatres, cities which were the backdrop of renowned plays or the homes or birthplaces of some of the writers who will be studied during the course of the project, represent an opportunity not to be missed. Then, the pedagogy will be student-focused, from the 'bottom-up' as opposed to the traditional frontal or 'top-down' approach. It is essential to 'empower' the students in order to promote self-confidence, a sense of initiative and to enable them to develop analytical skills which they can transfer to any subject or study they may want to pursue at a later stage. The project will promote the development of lifelong competences, a positive attitude towards communication, a cultural knowledge in the contexts of a national and European heritage.