A city at the crossroads of East and West, Thessaloniki is benefiting richly from its selection as this year's Cultural Capital of Europe. According to the Mayor of Thessaloniki, Konstaninos Kosmopoulos, the "focal point of the programme of events for the last eight months of 1997" is the exhibition of treasures from Mount Athos at the Byzantine Museum.

At a popular level, there have been concerts by U2, and there have been oratorios and opera, classical, jazz, rock and folk music. And Thessaloniki's rich heritage over the centuries from its Armenian and Jewish communities has been celebrated.

The long-term benefits for the city are seen in new buildings and projects, including the Royal Theatre, with an 825-seat auditorium and 150-seat experimental theatre; an open-air theatre in the forest (Theatro Dasous) and an open-air theatre in the park (Theatro Kepou); and a new Museum of Contemporary Art. A new Museum of the Cinema is the first of its kind in Greece, and has a natural home in a city with a long cinema tradition. It will become home to the large collections of the filmmakers Nikos Bililis and Vasilis Papapdopoulos, and the giant cinema posters of Arvanitidis. On the western edges of the city, the former Lazarist Monastery is being converted to provide the area with a much-needed theatre and cultural centre.

Other projects funded by the Cultural Capital programme include the Museum of Photography, the Museum of Industrial Planning, and the Festival of Chamber Music.

The programme has included exhibitions on Carravagio and Michelangelo. And, appropriately for the city founded by Cassander, brother-in-law of Alexander the Great, Thessaloniki is hosting a major exhibition, on "Alexander The Great in European Art". The exhibition is the brainchild of Prof Nikos Hatzinikolaou of the University of Crete, the art historian who assembled the highlyacclaimed exhibition on El Greco in Crete in 1990.

For the first time, major works including paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings, and French and Flemish tapestries on Alexander have been assembled from museums and private collections throughout Europe and America, including Rubens's The Coronation Of Roxane By Alexander, and works by Tiepolo, Fontebasso, Preti, Damiani and others.

Pride of place at the exhibition probably goes to the armour made in 1557-1558 by Lucio Piccinio, one of the greatest armour-makers of all times, for Alessandro Farnese, the Duke of Parma, whose ego was boosted by the associations of his name.

But will Thessaloniki be judged a success for its programme for Cultural Capital of Europe? Mayor Kosmopoulos admits it was hard to foresee the enthusiastic response the programme would draw from Thessalonians and from visitors. "Today, even the most optimistic predictions have been surpassed," he says with pride.

`Even the most optimistic predictions have been surpassed'