The powerful lines of migration, revolution, religious difference, economic upheaval and prolonged environmental degradation threaten in 2012 to confirm the Mediterranean Basin as a classic setting for the much-trailed clash of civilizations. The volatile social and geopolitical forces unleashed by the Arab Spring, the mounting financial and political disarray of the European Union, and the surge of economic modernization and dislocation in large parts of the African Continent seem increasingly to spotlight the Mediterranean as a site of ethnic conflict, increased religious estrangement and destructive competition for scarce resources. This paper seeks to reclaim the multiple narratives of the Mediterranean region as a zone of intercultural exchange and educational renewal. Recasting the historic experience of the Mediterranean as an enabling resource for contemporary creative interculturalism, hybridity and invention across the full spectrum of arts and sciences, the paper defends a dynamic vision of Mediterranean intercultural learning from out of which new and refurbished understandings of difference and democracy can emerge. These rediscovered energies of encounter and creativity can impact directly on the work of schools, universities and other institutions of educational dialogue, providing a new basis for intercultural regeneration across the region and beyond.