Year 2000: The Rough Guide (Rough Guide Miniguides) [Paperback]

After all the hype and hysteria, the great millennium night - the world's biggest party - has come and gone. The music's over, the fireworks are finished, and the millennium bug has done its worst (or not). How was it for you? As we go to press in late 1999, it's impossible to predict what will happen, except that millions of people will start the twenty-first century with a hangover. But the party goes on. Thousands of special festivals and exhibitions, concerts, carnivals and other events are taking place around the world throughout the year 2000. Many of these have been specially commissioned to reflect millennial themes, and even those that are simply rebranded versions of regular events have had some kind of millennial spin added.

In Europe, in particular, there will be a vast cornucopia of cultural happenings, thanks in part to the fact that nine urban centres have been designated Cities of Culture 2000, with a great deal of cross-fertilisation between the nine countries involved. Special commemorative exhibitions and similar events will also take place in pilgrimage centres such as Rome and Santiago de Compostela. France, meanwhile, has turned to her artists, musicians, dramatists, sculptors and writers to produce a highly creative programme of millennium events to run throughout the year.

In Britain the millennium celebrations will continue to the end of 2000 as part of the Millennium Festival, and many of the new Landmark Projects will start to open up around the country. In the London borough of Greenwich - the home of time - the Millennium Dome has finally opened and even though it has been dogged by controversy since its conception, it will undoubtedly prove a huge success before it closes on December 31. Elsewhere in London the Millennium Bridge, the Tate Modern and the British Museum Great Court are just a few of the attractions that will last well beyond the end of the millennium year.

In the Middle East millions of pilgrims are expected to descend on the biblical sites of the Holy Land in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories. In the rush to celebrate, most of the world seems to have forgotten that the calendar which has now ticked over into the millennium is based (approximately) on the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.

The millennium has been - and continues to be - an event of the imagination. It has produced some spectacular follies and some equally dramatic failures. Many people - artists, sculptors and architects amongst them - have seen their ideas realised, their pet projects incarnated as millennium monuments or similar legacies. Others have watched as their dreams crumbled, their plans in some cases relegated to the electronic realm from which they first sprung, doomed to gather dust as a Web site of interest only to researchers in 2100 looking back at the millennial madness of a previous generation.

But even though we may think of some of these monuments as follies today (in the same way that the Eiffel Tower was in the last century), they may well endure for a century or more. In Ireland the Strangford Stone will undoubtedly still be standing on the shores of Strangford Lough. France's Mridienne Verte will have matured into a remarkable living sculpture crossing the country from north to south. London's Millennium Dome may still be standing (albeit with different contents and a new roof).

As well as providing a compelling country-by-country guide to celebrations throughout the year 2000 worldwide, we've also explored what Internet users call FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) about why calendars were invented in the first place, why so many cults are associated with the millennium, and why the real start of the twenty-first century is January 1, 2001.

Nick Hanna Hastings Old Town October 1999