Our slogan is becoming an impetus, so we say to each of you, with all conviction: Shine your light! Light up your city!

By designating Timisoara with the title of European Capital of Culture for the year 2023, the city shaped its objectives, focusing on the people's influence on the community in which they live. Thus, we aim to become a city where cultural excellence prevails, providing our citizens with the confidence that through involvement and participation, we will be able to produce significant changes in the city of Timișoara.

The Banat region has formed a diverse cultural palette over the centuries, being the place that currently hosts over 30 cultural communities, among which are Romanians, Germans, Hungarians, Serbians, Croatians, Italians, Spaniards and Bulgarians.

This cultural palette is the added value of the city since it established the emergence of public entities dedicated especially to European citizens settled in Timişoara.

It is in Timișoara that in the year 1771, the first German-language newspaper in Central and South-Eastern Europe was printed – Temeswarer Nachrichten. It was also the site of the first public library and the first film screening, and currently, the city has three state theatres in three different languages. Between 1880 and 1914, Timișoara was the most important industrial, commercial, financial and cultural city in the region, admired for its artistic excellence in music, literature, painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as its technical and scientific innovations.

In 2023, the main focus is promoting the European journey of Timisoara, through which we offer our European and international partners the opportunity to present their culture as part of our common European heritage.

Starting from the phrase "Timişoara was the first city in which", we are proud that the European Capital of Culture slogan in 2023 is entitled "Shine your light - Light up your city!". To explain the connection between the two previously mentioned key phrases, we must go back to the past, in 1884, when Timişoara became the first city in continental Europe with electric street lighting.

The Light of Timisoara has had an essential role throughout history, both from a practical and symbolic point of view. "Light up your city!" is the slogan set around the light, reflecting the journey from the common individual to the conscious and engaged European citizen, where community values and passion are rooted.

To understand the influence of historical events on the development of cultural identity, it is worth mentioning that in 1989, the sparks of the Revolution against the Ceauşist regime ignited on the streets of Timisoara, stimulating transcontinental transformations over the years. The beautiful city on the Bega river was the soul and promoter of the region, the bridge between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and South-Eastern Europe, which through its citizens, managed, in times of crisis, to inspire and unify others as well to do the same.

With this slogan, we want to launch an invitation to a double mobilization: on the one hand, Shine your light - encourages citizens to freely express their values and attitudes, metaphorically described as an "inner light", and on the other, with the help of this light to remove the darkness and passivity around them through a culturally fueled civic process.

We aim to set civic energy in motion, "exporting" the values of other European cities that we believe in, to stimulate an open, visionary attitude among citizens.

The campaign slogan is the essence of our message: Shine your light! – Light up your city!