Why we are special

For this part the seven participating cities was asked to select seven documents or groups of documents to focus the uniqueness, the individuality of the city. Not only the highlights, but also the small peculiarities.

Each section opens with a view or map of the city, enabling us to visualise the extent of the city in historic time. This is followed by documentation of the building style particular to the city in question. The succeeding five presentations concerns highlights of cultural heritage or typical everyday phenomena, whatever the cities choose to present. The reader will probably find that not only are the special character revealed in the items itself, but there are also clearly differences in what parts of the heritage is chosen for presentation as well as the tone or character of the presentation itself.

The items of this section are to some extent inspired by the common themes given to the cities of culture for the year 2000:

Bergen - Art, Work and Leisure
Bologna - Information and Communication
Helsinki - Knowledge, Technology and the Future
Cracow - Thought and Spirituality
Prague - Historical and Cultural Heritage
Reykjavik - Nature and Environment
Santiago de Compostela - Europe and the World

You will find there is considerable pride to be found in these presentations. Pride in this beautiful and exciting city where we live, pride in the phenomenon described that means so much to us who live here and that visitors marvel at, and pride in the documents displayed, usually kept secure in the vaults of our city archives, but now shown to you with excitement and pleasure. A good pride this, a pride in values to cherish.

With these words, we invite you to visit all our seven cities through the gateway of our archives.