A ceremony took place at the Boris Hristov House of Culture in Plovdiv, where the title of European Capital of Culture was handed over to the Irish city of Galway and the Croatian city of Rijeka.
Members of a Delegation of Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture and the City of Rijeka – Nikola Ivaniš, Rijeka Deputy Mayor, Maja Bošković, Senior Associate for Protocol and Public Relations, and Dorian Celcer, Partnerships and Protocol Manager at Rijeka 2020 – visited the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, the 2019 European Capital of Culture, from 11 to 13 January, where they were present at the European Capital of Culture title handover ceremony held at the Boris Hristov House of Culture.
The Deputy Mayors of Rijeka and Galway, Nikola Ivaniš and Donal Lyons, took the stage to claim the title of European Capital of Culture, which Rijeka and Galway will bear during 2020. The event was attended by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria, Mr. Boil Banov, the Mayor of the City of Plovdiv, Mr. Zdravko Dimitrov, and by representatives of the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation.
The programme of the handover ceremony consisted of performances by young musicians from Plovdiv and the State Opera of Plovdiv’s Chamber Orchestra, accompanied by Liya Petrova on a 1690 Italian violin by Matteo Goffriller. Recordings of hundreds of cultural events that took place during 2019 as part of the Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture were shown during the ceremony.
