Minister of Culture András Bozóki and EU Minister Etele Baráth signed an agreement on the funding with Pécs Mayor László Toller on Thursday. State and EU monies will make up 90pc of the funding, and the city of Pécs will cover the rest.
The funding will be used for five big projects already outlined in Pécs?s bid for the title. They will be carried out between 2007 and 2009.
The projects include the construction of a music and conference hall with capacity to seat 1,000, for which the city will call an international tender, and the restoration and refurbishment of the city?s famous Zsolnay porcelain factory and the surrounding area, to create a city within a city. A theme park and art centre are planned for the new cultural district, as well as restaurants, hotels and offices. Pécs will also spruce up its historic main street, renovating the former county seat building to accommodate the Gallery of Modern Hungarian Art. The county and city libraries will be merged to create a larger, integrated information centre, and the city?s parks will be improved with the addition of new benches, drinking fountains and tress.
Each year since the programme was started by Greek Culture Minister Melina Mercouri in 1985, a different European city has been awarded the title ?European Capital of Culture?, with an aim ?to open up to the European public particular aspects of the culture of the city, region or country concerned." From 2005, a rotating system was introduced, giving each EU member a chance to pick one or more of its cites four years in advance to carry the title, with competition among the candidate cities encouraged. EU cultural ministers decided in 2004 that, from 2009, a city from an old member state and from a new one would share the title.
Last year, Pécs was picked for Hungary?s choice of European Capital of Culture in 2010, beating Budapest. It will share the title with a German city, either Görlitz or Essen.
Cities that were earlier named ?City of Culture? included Athens, Florence, Amsterdam, (West) Berlin, Paris, Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, Antwerp, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Copenhagen, Thessaloniki, Stockholm and Weimar.
