Science and art, reflection and experience, have never ceased to explore the darkness of the night, to be inspired by it. Historians, sociologists, psychologists, as well as novelists, poets, painters, have described and praised it.

These pages lead to nocturnal paths. To paths where you can discern images from life, history, legends, and the terrors of the night, to be transported to the atmosphere that the night had when electricity had not yet dissolved the darkness, and along with it, the magic, in the nocturnal city and in the countryside. When the night was still the realm of legends and specters, of wonders and phantoms, of crime and mystery, of dark and foul-smelling alleys, of threatening countryside, but also of hard labor.