Jonathan Morrison
Does being European City of Culture matter?
Apart from the boost to tourism, what has the European accolade ever done for places such as Timisoara and Kaunas? Quite a lot, it turns out...
What do Glasgow, Liverpool, Marseille and Rotterdam have in common? It’s not just that they’re major ports, but also that they’ve been awarded a special accolade: that of being European Capital of Culture. If that was your first guess, then there’s a place on my pub quiz team for you.
Yet what does this actually mean and how useful is it? In Glasgow’s case it helped spawn the unforgettable if brutally satirical character of Rab C Nesbit, an alcoholic and unemployed philosopher of sorts. Residents might also say the 1990 accolade helped reposition Scotland’s largest city as more forward-thinking than before and brought investment into galleries and museums, going some way to poulticing the post-industrial hangover. But the latest crop of cities awarded the title will certainly be hoping for far more than that.
Due to the pandemic, there are actually three cities of culture for each of 2022 and 2023, although the trend towards having multiple places for each year — which existed pre-Covid — does seem to devalue the award slightly. No matter. This year the three are Veszprem in Hungary, Eleusis in Greece, and Timisoara in Romania, which probably represents the best case study for any assessment of the concept.
Given the title is bestowed through the European Union, it’s unsurprising that a strong pan-European identity is helpful, and nowhere is this more true than Timisoara, a city with a rich history and culture dating back to Roman times, and a place that has been variously a colony of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian, part of Serbia and Romania, and which reflects all these in its heritage. It has, of course, been behind the Iron Curtain – the mass unrest that sparked the Romanian Revolution of 1989 began here – and now aspires to be part of Schengen and the Eurozone. Few places on earth have such an incredible history, and that’s before we start layering on the tales of one Vlad Draculea in the nearby Carpathian Mountains or factoring in trips to Corvin Castle an hour or two away - one of the most atmospheric and significant fortresses on the entire continent.
Corvin Castle is not far away from Timisoara and is one of the largest fortresses in Europe (CORBIS)
Timisoara is also a city of diverse populations: it is a melting pot of different ethnic groups, languages, and religions. There are Hungarians, Serbs, Germans and Jews in addition to Romanians — and Catholics and Protestants and Muslims in addition to the Orthodox; in a city of around 300,000, there are 80 churches. This diversity has given birth to a vibrant cultural scene, with various festivals and exhibitions that celebrate the city’s multiculturalism and a warmth and generosity of spirit that comes with an easy acceptance of people for who they are, not what they represent. So that no doubt ticked many boxes in Brussels.
Another factor in its favour is that it’s also been a place of innovation and creativity: it was the first city on the European mainland to have electric street lighting (narrowly behind Newcastle) and the first city in Romania to have a brewery. People have always thought a little more independently, too – hence the protests that eventually led to the overthrow of the brutal Ceausescu regime and the falling of the final domino in the Warsaw Pact. Or the chants that greeted the unveiling of a statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf that had been gifted by Benito Mussolini to his then Axis ally – “You can take your b*tch and f*ck her,” the crowd opined. This unfettered thinking might help explain why the city is rapidly becoming a high-tech hub, with companies like Nokia and Google moving in and a consequent development of high-end office space in places like the new Iulius Town quarter. And why GDP has soared in recent years.
So there are plenty of reasons for tourists to visit, not least because the historic town centre, largely constructed after Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Austrian general, arrived in 1716, is picture-postcard perfect and has sometimes been called “little Vienna”. As the Mayor, Dominic Fritz, puts it: “It’s a good place to rediscover Europe, whatever you think of Brexit; it’s historic and contemporary, insta-worthy; both cute and exciting. It’s a great place for a city break!”
Well, he would say that. But while the European City of Culture tag is probably useful for attracting a few more tourists – the target is half a million more - there’s also some serious ambition at play: Mr Fritz, who, as his name might suggest, is a German born and bred, sees it as the catalyst for a wholesale transformation of the urban realm.
“I’m a German German,” he says, “not part of the minority or with any family connections. I came at 19 to work in an orphanage and fell in love with the place. I founded an association on an anti-corruption platform in 2017 and decided to run for mayor myself a few years later to change the system from within. I ran without being a Romanian national - I’m still a German – and now I’ve been mayor for two and a half years; in any other city I wouldn’t have been elected. It shows what an open, multicultural, welcoming and courageous place this is: it’s not a theory but a way of life, and has been for hundreds of years. We lived the EU’s ideas long before France and Germany did.
“Now the task is to really embrace culture as an engine for transforming the city. We could pay for Beyoncé to turn up and give a concert, but what we really want to do is create a sense of belonging, tell our story, regenerate our city and keep talented people living and working here.”
His ambition is to provide the same quality of life as citizens might expect in Germany or Spain – not least because there is something of a brain-drain to those places going on - and aims to overhaul public transportation, public spaces and public education in his first stint in charge. He is not shy about drawing on EU development funds to do this – “Buying new buses with a Spanish doctor’s tax money is … awesome,” he quips, adding: “The reaction in Germany [he is constantly the subject of German media attention] is the same as elsewhere: most Europeans understand that we can only survive together and that if the system works we can all rise together.”
But back to the culture, and particularly the architecture, usually the most enduring aspect of it. Whilst the outskirts of Timisoara are best described as “Communist horror” and notably brutal, there are many hundreds of fine buildings in need of a bit of love and care, particularly the Art Nouveau houses and factories of the Fabric District, adjacent to the centre. The grand Baroque and Secessionist creations of the absolute centre — off the photogenic Union Square with its wonderful Art Museum — tend to be under repair already, with one or two exceptions.
Mr Fritz has come up with a two-stage plan for this, and it’s one that architects, politicians and the public in this country could well take note of. Firstly, the stick: owners who fail to maintain their buildings, particularly the façade – “part of the public good,” he states – are hit by a tax surcharge. “It doesn’t make you popular but most people see the positive effect,” Fritz admits. Secondly, the carrot: “We also have to offer support”. And that support is pretty incredible: the government will pay 30 per cent of the costs of refurbishment and give you a loan for the other 70 per cent at zero interest, repayable in ten years. Of the 900 classified historic buildings, about 400 are eligible. Compare that to the UK where VAT on repairing buildings often makes it cheaper to demolish and build afresh: a waste of time, materials and consequently carbon. If only we could do the same.
So what’s the catch? “It’s difficult to get good builders,” he admits. “Many of them have gone to the UK for higher wages.”
However, it would be unfair to suggest the regeneration of Timisoara is dependent on public largesse. Many local entrepreneurs, such as the owners of the elegant boutique Hotel del Corso ten minutes’ walk away, have already undertaken substantial and successful redevelopments of their properties and scaffolding seems to be everywhere at the moment – from the Cathedral of St George, finished in 1774 and once host to the composer Franz Listz, to the iconic Fabric Water Tower that sits above the picturesque Bega River like a gothic watchtower.
“After nationalisation under Communism, for years many buildings were completely uncared for,” Roxana Patrulescu, a local architect who is helping run the regeneration scheme, reveals. “Then when the regime ended people were able to buy them really cheaply: so often they can’t afford to maintain them now, and for some, there’s still an expectation that the government will pay. There’s a lot to do and it’s a slow process [to win everyone over], but we’re committed to preserving the architecture for the inhabitants, making the city liveable, raising the quality of life, creating pride ... and if more tourists come then that’s a plus! Being European Capital of Culture is an opportunity for people to see us, but also an opportunity for our people to realise what they have. It’s a new start.”
Kaunas came to prominence as a river port at the confluence of the Nemunas and the Neris (GETTY IMAGES)
Another European City of Culture that is trading heavily on the architectural aspect is Kaunas, the beautiful medieval and modernist city in Lithuania that was a 2022 winner. While it may have come to life as a river port at the confluence of the Nemunas and the Neris, later becoming a Hanseatic trading post and the site of an important castle, the real boom came in the early twentieth century when the shifts of war and history left it the capital of the new nation of Lithuania (the Poles having annexed Vilnius).
With independence and primacy, Kaunas became known as “little Paris” as artists and architects flocked to the rapidly growing city. New suburbs were built to handle an influx of people from the countryside, new parks were laid out, the streets were paved and filled with buses, and foreign embassies and important government buildings were erected in the dominant style of the time: Art Deco with heavy overtones of Bauhaus. Today it has perhaps the most concentrated collection of fine Art Deco buildings anywhere, with the Central Post Office, the Vytautas the Great War Museum, the National Bank of Lithuania, the iconic Christ’s Resurrection Church that looms over the city, the former Vatican Embassy (now a gallery) and the Zalgiris Stadium being particularly impressive examples. All are worth a close inspection. And if you fancy something a bit different, you can even stay in the modernist villa of one of the greatest local architects, Stasys Kudokas, the designer of the Post Office and a hundred others – it’s like a time capsule from the 1930s, complete with wireless and wardrobe.
Kaunas is a charming blend of the old and the mid-20th century (LITHUANIAN DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM)
The good times of the 1920s and early 1930s were not to last, of course, and few places have been more of a shuttlecock for the Great Powers than Lithuania. And architecture is shaped by geopolitics more than any art; perhaps that seems obvious — after all, you can’t squirrel away a building like a missing impressionist in a Swiss vault.
So independence and consequence came as a brief flourishing that was quickly extinguished by the Second World War. Fully one quarter of the citizens were Jewish and were murdered in a pogrom after the German invasion in June 1941. In one incident in Kaunas, 68 Jewish men, allegedly Soviet sympathisers, were beaten to death with an iron bar as a crowd watched outside the Lietukis garage. Many would argue that the local population was powerless to resist the Nazi atrocities, but there have been other suggestions that they were sometimes willing participants as collaborators and anti-Semites and occasionally psychotics. Then came the Soviets, and after that, a period when the local mafia ran everything further into decrepitude.
Yet if there’s undoubtedly a dark history, there is much to celebrate in the present.
As Marija Pulokaitė, the head of the volunteer programme, puts it: “After the Soviets and with the mafia in the 1990s, it wasn’t an easy place to be. Sometimes it was perceived as very dangerous. But in recent years Kaunas has started to develop and you can see there’s a real pride now. Being European City of Culture sends the message that Lithuania is part of Europe and achieving a similar quality of life.
“After the pandemic, people need to feel life is getting better, so we’re trying in a small way to give them a bit of happiness, a bit of hope, help them become involved in their community and cultural life – being European City of Culture means it’s time to shine, time to be seen.”
And with an estimated 2.5 million tourists flooding in, despite some citing reservations about the proximity to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, it is certainly being seen. But what seems to be the real benefit of becoming the European Capital of Culture — tempted though we are to mock the very idea, Rab C Nesbitt-style — is not the visitors that winning the accolade brings, but the chance it gives the triumphant city to take stock of where and who they are and build for the future. As such, it may be far more valuable than it first appears.
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