Verona, the site of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and home to the famous Roman arena, is one of the most beautiful and richest towns in northern Italy. It boasts many of the small and medium-sized enterprises which form the backbone of Italian industry. Their exports range from poultry to textiles, and from furniture to thermo-engineering products.

Verona is now targeting the growth markets of the countries acceding to the European Union. As part of the programme of the Italian six-month EU Presidency, Veronese authorites organised a series of events on November 9-11 around the theme of the ten countries' cultures.

The invited diplomats included Ambassador Francesco Caruso, Italy's permanent delegate to UNESCO, and his Maltese counterpart, Ambassador Joseph Licari, as well as Dr Roderick Sant, counsellor at the Malta embassy in Rome.

The Palazzo della Gran Guardia, which dominates Piazza Brà, hosted an exhibition of films, photos and posters to introduce the accession countries to the Veronese public. A three-hour programme, Musica e Poesia per la Nuova Europa, celebrated the ten countries' accession. Maltese popular tunes were played. Poems by Dun Karm and Achille Mizzi were read in translation, and Dun Karm's Il-Liedna in the original Maltese.

The University of Verona and the International Institute for Opera and Poetry organised a day-long roundtable on the ten countries' contribution to Europe's cultural identity. Among the personalities present, Enrique Baron Crespo, president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, spoke on the contribution of culture to European integration and the importance of cultural policy for the enrichment of cultural diversity.

Mixing business with pleasure, the visit ended with a presentation of Verona's export-oriented firms at the Associazione degli industriali della Provincia di Verona, which represents more than 1,200 dynamic companies poised to take advantage of Verona's central position between Western and Eastern Europe.