Celebrations in Europe's capitals of culture — Plovdiv in Bulgaria and the Italian town of Matera — kick off the new year. Matera's city center with its ancient limestone grottoes has long been a World Heritage site. With an eye as to how culture can lead Europe into a better future, the southern Italian city chose "Open Future" as its 2019 motto.

Theaters across Germany will commemorate the 150th birthday of poet/playwright and Berlin bohemian Else Lasker-Schüler on February 11. The Berlin International Film Festival also starts in February, the last Berlinale with Dieter Kosslick at the helm — Carlo Chatrian, the longtime artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, will take over as the festival's new artistic director in 2020.

It's all about books in the eastern German city of Leipzig when its annual book fair opens on March 21 with the Czech Republic as guest of honor. In the western German city of Oberhausen, the Short Film Festival — said to be the world's oldest film festival — celebrates its 65th run. Back in 1962, young German directors at the festival such as Alexander Kluge stated that "Papa's cinema is dead."

On April 6, a new Bauhaus Museum opens in the German city of Weimar, where the world-famous school of design and architecture was founded one hundred years before. To coincide with centenary celebrations across Germany, the new museum presents early works from the Bauhaus workshop, and focuses on how Bauhaus artists and architects envisioned people living together.

Art lovers around the world admire the works of Leonardo Da Vinci even 500 years after his death on May 2, 1519. Exhibitions in France and Italy commemorate the genius Italian artist, and the Renaissance that followed. That same month, Israel is scheduled to host the Eurovision Song Contest — despite calls to boycott the event. "Dare to Dream" is the song competition's 2019 motto.

The music festival season really takes off in June. Music lovers will flock to Rock am Ring at the Nürburgring race track and "Rock im Park" in Nuremburg, both among Germany's largest music festivals. Other events in Germany include the Hurricane Festival and the Southside Festival, while the Roskilde Festival takes place in Denmark and the famed Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Classical music lovers will have their fill of festivals if they travel to the Austrian town of Salzburg for the annual festival starting on July 20 with Mozart, Strauss, Handel on the bill; or to the annual Bayreuth Festival that kicks off July 25 — Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" features, while the composer's great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner is directing "Tristan and Isolde" one last time.

The legendary Woodstock Festival took place 50 years ago and rumor has it there just might be a reincarnation this year, with a festival focusing on sustainability, activism and social justice designed to "save the world." In Spain, numerous exhibitions celebrating the 500th anniversary of explorer Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe are in store.

With its 49,000 exhibits, the Bauhaus Collection has long been housed in the original 1920s Bauhaus building in Dessau. That collection is now set to move to a spacious new museum in the same city, with an opening on September 8. In Berlin, the Humboldt Forum is scheduled to open right in time for the 250th birthday of world-famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt on September 14.

The recipients of the Nobel prizes will be announced in the first half of October and perhaps in 2019, a literature prize will once again be included. That award was canceled in 2018 in the wake of a sexual assault scandal involving the husband of one of the academy members. Rest assured that in Germany, the German Book Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade will be awarded.

Throughout the year, numerous exhibitions are planned in the Spanish capital of Madrid to celebrate 200 years of its illustrious Prado museum, which first opened on November 19, 1819. Film lovers can look forward to the 25th James Bond movie, a sequel to Casino Royale due to be released that month. It may be Daniel Craig's last stint as agent 007.

Another event celebrated throughout the year is the 200th birthday of revered German novelist and poet Theodor Fontane, best known for "Effi Briest." The Fontane Festival honoring the German writer who was born on December 30, 1919 begins in May. The European Film Prize is awarded in December, the same month the Society for the German language will announce the Word of the Year.

The Cold War was part of the picture at the Berlinale. Stars coming to the city, such as Italian diva Claudia Cardinale, would often pose in front of the Berlin Wall. A bizarre juxtaposition emerges from these shots, with the grinning glamour of Hollywood set against the backdrop of a divide that caused suffering for many people, not only in Berlin, but on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Berlin's film festival has upped the glitz and glamor in recent years, as attested by the timeline of fascinating images on show at the exhibition, "Between the Films — A Photo History of the Berlinale." Here in 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio thrilled fans on the red carpet by stopping to take a few snapshots. In today's smartphone era, the camera he's holding already feels old school.

In 1955, the Berlinale was held for the fifth time. Great sums were investing in publicity and marketing. Ten years after the end of World War II, the German Federal Republic wanted to show it was culturally anchored in the West. Posters promoting the festival were also widely present in communist East Berlin. World stars such as Peter Ustinov (pictured) contributed to the hype of the event.

In 1961, the Berlinale was still held at the end of June. While the instability of world politics was most directly felt in Berlin, Willy Brandt, then the city's mayor and later West German chancellor, was still beaming as he shook hands with Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield (accompanied by her husband, Mickey Hargitay). Five months later, the construction of the Berlin Wall would start.

The Berlinale was also held in 1962, despite the recently constructed Berlin Wall newly dividing the city. Photographer Heinz Köster took this shot of Hollywood star James Stewart in front of the Telefunken-Haus on Ernst-Reuter Square, a skyscraper completed in 1960. Berlin can still be chilly in the summer — at least that's the impression given by the way the actor is shivering.

In the wake of the revolutionary movements of 1968, the Berlin film festival would also be transformed by a leftward shift that celebrated daring, auteur filmmaking. Ten years later, film critic Wolf Donner (pictured center), who took on the direction of the Berlinale in 1976, moved the film festival from June to February, giving it an edge over Cannes, which is held in May.

In 1988, the atmosphere of political change could again be felt in Berlin as Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika policies took hold, with Aleksandr Askoldov’s "The Commissar" screening after a long ban in the Soviet Union. Also that year, filmmaker Agnes Varda premiered two films starring Jane Birkin (pictured), the drama "Kung Fu Master" and the docudrama "Jane B. par Agnès V."

After filming "One Two Three" in West Berlin in 1961 while the Wall was being built, director Billy Wilder returned to the German capital and its film festival over three decades later. He is shown here with Horst Buchholz, the lead actor of his Cold War film, the two standing in the slush in front of the Brandenburg Gate in February, 1993.

Dieter Kosslick became the festival director in 2001, giving a new impetus to the venerated celebration of film. A promoter of German cinema, he also boosted the level of glamour on the red carpet and brought more color to the festival. He personally accompanied guest stars to their film premieres, and often wore his trademark black hat — as he is pictured here alongside Judi Dench in 2007.

The "Between the Films – A Photo History of the Berlinale" exhibition — on show at the German Cinematheque in Berlin from September 28, 2018 through May 5, 2019 — is also a tribute to the work of the festival's press photographers. Erika Rabau, shown here taking a well-earned nap at the 1995 festival, was the Berlinale's official photographer from 1972 until shorty before her death in 2016.