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The European City (then Capital) of Culture (ECOC) is one of the oldest and most successful of EU cultural initiatives. It is an annual title awarded by the EU to one or more European cities, intended as a macro-event that puts the selected city under the spotlight, with the double aim of providing a stage for local cultural assets as well as hosting events from the rest of Europe, thereby enhancing mutual understanding and awareness. It claims to be a venue for confrontation, debate and reflection, encouraging cultural exchanges and co-operation, very much like European cultural policies in general. In the already crowded field of cultural events in Europe, it has carved a secure and growing position for itself, thanks to its specificity and its flexibility; it has become a well-recognized "brand", which cities compete to stage as fiercely as they do for the Olympic Games or World Fairs (Evans, 2003). Urban historians have recently started to analyse it alongside other major urban events: "The European City of Culture programme has become the highest profile European Union-sponsored cultural event and, more generally, an important part of the international artistic calendar" (Gold and Gold, 2005: 221). The ECOC can also be conceived as the EU's most direct attempt, one that is both practical and symbolic, at substantiating a "European cultural space", the fostering of which is, as we have seen, the overall, albeit ambivalent, objective of its cultural activity.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230250437_4

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