{"id":68910,"date":"2022-10-16T10:58:17","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T08:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/italybyevents.com\/?p=68910"},"modified":"2025-05-26T20:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T18:28:15","slug":"the-capitals-of-culture-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.italybyevents.com\/en\/the-capitals-of-culture-in-italy","title":{"rendered":"The Capitals of Culture in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “Capitals of Culture”<\/strong> are one of the initiatives created to enhance the territories and to promote culture in Europe and in Italy.
\nTo know which Italian cities<\/strong> have been designated gives the opportunity to visit them and discover their beauty.<\/p>\n

THE EUROPEAN CAPITALS OF CULTURE<\/em><\/span>
\n<\/b>Since 1985, the European Commission<\/strong> designates each year cities that may offer an interesting cultural program in order to generate a tourist attraction.
\nThe initiative has been first proposed to the European Community by Melina Merkouri, then Greece’s Minister of Culture, and the first European City of Culture was Athens.
\nSince 2000<\/b> the title was renamed as “European Capital of Culture”.
\nIn 2000<\/strong>, 8 cities were designated. But since 2001 it has been decided to choose a maximum of two cities each year, with a calendar of the countries already pre-set up to 2033. The calendar also provides that “each candidate country or potential candidate can host the event only once in the period from 2020 to 2033 “.<\/p>\n

The 4 Italian cities<\/b> European Capitals of Culture are:
\n– Florence<\/b> (1986 – Tuscany<\/a>)
\n– Bologna<\/b> (2000 – Emilia Romagna<\/a>) together with Brussels (Belgium), Reykjav\u00edk (Iceland), Bergen (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Prague (Czech Republic), Krakow (Poland), Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and Avignon ( France)
\n– Genoa<\/b> (2004 – Liguria<\/a>) together with Lille (France)
\n– Matera<\/b> (2019 – Basilicata<\/a>) together with Plovdiv (Bulgaria)
\n– Gorizia<\/b> (2025 – Friuli-Venezia Giulia<\/a>) supporting in a join bid the official capital which is Nova Gorica (Slovenia)<\/strong>
\nThe next Italian designation will be in 2033.
\nTo know more about the European Capitals of Culture>>><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

THE ITALIAN CAPITALS OF CULTURE
\n<\/b><\/em><\/span>Since 2015, Italy<\/b> has also come up with a similar initiative and each year selects a city to hold the title of Italian Capital of Culture with the aim of promoting cultural values and generating tourism to discover new destinations in the country.
\nThe initiative<\/b> was proposed by the Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini when Matera was designated European Capital of Culture in 2019. As for the European initiative, the first year there was an “almost crowded team “but from 2016 it was decided to concentrate all resources on a single city.<\/p>\n

The cities designated <\/b>as Italian Capitals of Culture are:
\n– Cagliari<\/b> (Sardinia<\/a>), Lecce<\/b> (Puglia<\/a>), Perugia<\/b> (Umbria<\/a>), Ravenna<\/b> (Emilia Romagna<\/a>) and Siena<\/b> (Tuscany<\/a>), in 2015
\n– Mantua<\/b> (Lombardy<\/a>) in 2016,
\n– Pistoia<\/b> (Tuscany<\/a>) in 2017,
\n– Palermo<\/b> (Sicily<\/a>) in 2018
\n– Matera<\/b> (Basilicata<\/a>) in 2019 was the European Capital of Culture, so there was no Italian capital.
\n– Parma<\/b> (Emilia Romagna<\/a>) in 2020 and 2021 to make up for the year of the lockdown
\n– Procida<\/b> (Campania<\/a>) in 2022
\n– Bergamo<\/b> and Brescia<\/b> (Lombardy<\/a>) in 2023
\n– Pesaro<\/strong> (Marche<\/a>) in 2024
\n– Agrigento<\/strong> (Sicily<\/a>) in 2025
\n– L’Aquila<\/strong> (Abruzzo<\/a>) in 2026<\/p>\n

Credits<\/span> – Thanks to Stux<\/a> for the cover image<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European and Italian Capitals of Culture in Italy. Which cities held and will hold the title?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":78436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2852],"tags":[],"regioni":[2317],"luogo":[],"class_list":["post-68910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus-en","regioni-italy"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Capitals of Culture in Italy: which cities have been designated?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover which Italian cities have held the title of European Capitals of Culture and which will be the next Italian Capitals of Culture.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.italybyevents.com\/en\/the-capitals-of-culture-in-italy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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