Cork's reign as European Capital of Culture ended as it started, on the streets where the people of the city enjoyed a spectacle that for many may have been their only contact with the year-long celebration. Between those opening and closing events there was a diverse range of cultural experiences, but winning the title - a significant achievement in itself - was always going to be far easier than pleasing everybody with the programme of events.
The Cork 2005 team did not, in the first instance, make life easy for itself. By making a public call for projects - rather than taking a more curatorial role - they created far more expectations than they could ever hope to meet. With only 200 of the 2,000 submissions making it into the programme, it was bound to create some sense of local grievance, but the risk in taking this approach was worth the opprobrium: any charge of cultural elitism does not stand up when the scale of community participation is considered. Initial problems of communication - signposting to what was taking place - was poor by any standards and although this was effectively remedied, it should have been a priority to get this vital aspect of such an important showcase project right in the first place.
There were, too, murmurings about a slow local response in the business community. Hopefully, the relationships which did eventually develop between culture and commerce will now continue and will serve to encourage more of the same.
The city played host to some impressive icons of contemporary culture, including Daniel Libeskind, John Berger, Sebastiao Salgado and the Sol Pico dance company, as well as honouring its own heritage, particularly with the James Barry exhibition and the Frank O'Connor international short story competition, which the city council has taken the admirable decision to continue to support. That it was all managed on €17 million deserves applause: the new culture capital, Patras in Greece, is planning little more than 70 events on a similar budget.
So what are likely to be the indelible marks left by Cork's 365 days of cultural abundance? To say it has served its purpose, or not, is an impossibility because the purpose is not clear. It can only be hoped that it has served the purpose of art, which the composer Benjamin Britten once described as to inspire, comfort, entertain and touch. The writer Theo Dorgan makes a good point when he suggests that the time to judge its success might be sometime in the future when emerging writers, musicians and artists acknowledge that it was in a moment of Cork's year of culture that their imagination was seized.