ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a statement that Europe is represented by more than banknotes and economic shared spaces. The idea of the European Capitals of Culture (ECoC) project was shaped by Melina Mercouri, at the time the Greek Minister for Culture, who anticipated the idea at the centre of European Union (EU) rhetoric now: ‘unity in diversity’. Equally challenging and vague is the notion of ‘European heritage’ that the ECoC programmes aim to promote. To investigate the European Heritage themes and discourses of Europeanness that are used by Valletta, Plovdiv and Galway in the ECoC bids, and in particular elements of the Discourse Historical Approach. The topos of unity represents a further common theme, either as a topos in its own right, or as a sub-topos of heritage, realising in discourse the controversial adage of the EU ‘unity in diversity’.
