A Muscovite heeds Yelstin's call to "smile more" during a New Year's bash  ALSO: Windows on a New Year: Web cams from around the world welcome 1999 INTERACTIVE The world celebrates the new year

• Paris set for millennium
• Pope welcomes millennium pilgrims
• Spain opens Holy Door
• Russia bids farewell to troubled year
• Australia enters 1999 with huge bang
• Asians eye 1999 cautiously
• Related stories and sites

December 31, 1998
Web posted at: 9:15 p.m. EST (0215 GMT)

(CNN) -- New Year's revelers mobbed the streets in Europe's cities, as much of the continent marked a milestone in European unity.

With the dawn of 1999, a new common currency, the euro, was born, merging the economic fate of 11 nations and 290 million people. The euro will eventually replace francs, lira and marks. But for the next three years, it will exist only as a virtual currency used in banks, credit cards, and bond and stock markets.

Employees at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, worked overtime Thursday, preparing for the euro's first trading day on Monday.

On the streets outside, the new year was welcomed with firecrackers popping and fizzling through the night.

An open air party at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate offered about 100 entertainers and a midnight fireworks show.

In Paris, thousands crowded the Champs Elysees, a wide boulevard leading to Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe, while a clock of lights on the Eiffel Tower read "365 days before the year 2000."

Paris set for millennium

France was promising to lay out the red carpet for the millennium celebration.

The Culture Ministry said Thursday it would set up 12 huge doorways through the heart of Paris, leading from the Louvre museum along the elegant Champs Elysees up to the Arc de Triomphe.

The gates will be designed by artists, film directors and fashion designers and linked by a massive red carpet.

"It will be the most amazing decor ever set up in the center of Paris," Culture Minister Catherine Trautmann told reporters.

In addition, Paris has ordered a Ferris wheel, billed as the biggest in Europe, to be built at the foot of the Champs Elysees. It will be transformed into a giant clock on December 31, 1999, and lead the countdown to 2000.

The government has earmarked some $12.5 million for the Paris party. Officials expect up to 1 million people to pour into the center of the capital to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium.

Pope welcomes millennium pilgrims

Pope John Paul II delivered his year-end hymn of thanksgiving, skipping 1999 and looking ahead to the new millennium.

"In a year's time, we will already be in the Holy Year and numerous pilgrims will be starting to arrive from every corner of the Earth," he said.

"I wish from my heart that they will be welcomed by a church alive and rich in religious fervor; a church generous and sensible toward the needs of mankind, especially the poor and those in need."

Spain opens Holy Door

Centuries-old tradition will come together with modern technology in the Spanish pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela. The Holy Door in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela was opened Thursday to mark the start of a Holy Year in the city, and an Internet camera caught it all.

"The opening of the Holy Door has a special significance this year -- the gateway to the great jubilee of the year 2000," said a statement from the archbishop on an Internet Web site, which invited people to watch the ceremony from the burial site of Saint James via a live camera.

The pope has declared the year 2000 a Holy Year for Catholics throughout the world, but Santiago holds a Holy Year whenever Saint James' Day, July 25, falls on a Sunday, as in 1999.

The faithful were able to watch the ceremony via an Internet video camera that updated its view of the Holy Door every 15 seconds. The sculpted 17th-century Holy Door remains closed except in Holy Years.

Authorities expect some 2 million pilgrims during 1999, many of whom will walk some 500 miles (800 kilometers) along the most traditional pilgrim route from St. Jean Pied-de-Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago on the northwest tip of Spain.

Russia bids farewell to troubled year

Russians welcomed the new year with a call to "smile more," as the nation marked the end of an economically disastrous 1998.

In his New Year's Eve message, broadcast in nine time zones as the new year approached, Russian President Boris Yeltsin asked Russians to embrace 1999 with optimism and pride in their country.

"What can I say? The year was difficult for this country, for many of you, and for me, too. But New Year's Eve is always about new hopes, new dreams, new plans," Yeltsin said.

The past year brought a series of economic hardships, including devaluation of the ruble and a severe budget shortage that left millions of state employees without a paycheck for months.

Russia's Orthodox patriarch echoed Yeltsin's words, but he said signs of improvement were already visible.

"The country faces difficulties, but I believe that the New Year will bring a breakthrough," Patriarch Alexiy II said at a packed church service at Yelokhovsky Cathedral.

The Orthodox Church marks the new year on January 13. But the church also recognizes secular holidays, and Alexiy II delivers New Year's prayers every December 31.

Perhaps the most unorthodox New Year celebration took place hundreds of miles above the earth on the Russian space station Mir.

Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev spent a record third New Year's Eve in orbit, commemorating the moment with a sip of cognac, despite a ban on alcohol on Mir.

South African President Nelson Mandela challenged his people to work together to solve the problems of poverty and corruption, legacies of decades of apartheid.

"The New Year will bring many changes," Mandela said in a four-minute broadcast. "They will depend on our working together to realize our dream."

Meanwhile, old challenges will be carried into 1999, including the conflict between ethnic Albanians and the Yugoslavian government in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Despite a conciliatory New Year's message from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, his government allies vowed Thursday to defend Kosovo with "all means" and fight against NATO if it intervenes in the troubled province.

In a year-end message read on state television, Milosevic said he expected 1999 to lead to a "multiethnic Kosovo, based on the principles of equality for all." But his government ally, Serbia's ultranationalist Vice Premier Vojislav Seslj, said Serbia is taking continued NATO threats of intervention in Kosovo very seriously, and "we are ready to defend it."

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Australia enters 1999 with huge bang

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Australia enters 1999 with huge bang

Sydney was one of the first major cities to bid farewell to 1998 and did so with a huge bang. Millions of Sydney residents partied Thursday night while watching fireworks explode over the harbor.

The Sydney Opera House was bathed in pulses of green, red and blue light as massive fireworks burst over the harbor in the first of two bombardments, which began at 9 p.m. (1000 GMT) Thursday.

Sydney celebrates every major holiday and event with fireworks, but New Year's Eve is a pyrotechnic orgy, and this year's barrage was a dress rehearsal for sky shows to mark next year's welcome of the year 2000, and the summer Olympic Games set for September 2000.

Crowds cried "Ooooh" and "Aaaaah!" as combinations of fireworks, some formations bigger than most downtown buildings, lit the sultry southern summer night sky. The upper parts of some fireworks were cut off by low cloud cover.

Asians eye 1999 cautiously

In central Tokyo, crowds thronged Zojoji temple just before midnight, waiting for a Buddhist monk to strike the temple bell 108 times to dispel the evils of the past year and usher in good luck for 1999.

Much of the rest of Tokyo was eerily empty Thursday night, deserted by urbanites returning to hometowns in the countryside to celebrate New Year's, the most important holiday on the Japanese calendar.

In much of Asia, 1999 is the Year of the Rabbit, and Tokyo's department stores were well-stocked with calendars, cards and knickknacks bearing rabbit images.

For many Chinese, New Year's Eve is not nearly as important an occasion as the Lunar New Year on February 16, when hundreds of millions of people head home for family reunions.

Still, television and radio audiences were treated to a rare live prime-time address by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who was upbeat in summing up 1998 and urged his people to be confident about the future.

Meanwhile, many leaders in Asian countries hard hit by the region's ongoing economic crisis tried to put the best spin possible on their official New Year messages.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Thursday in his New Year speech that preserving stability, peace and cooperation among Malaysians is the key to ensuring the country's economic recovery.

Mahathir said 1999 will test the resilience of Malaysians, and they should prepare to take on the challenges.

Neighboring Singapore, which had weathered the economic crisis relatively well, fell into recession as 1998 ended, according to figures in the prime minister's New Year's message.

Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said Singapore's growth for the entire year was 1.3 percent and described it as "not a bad performance, considering the unfavorable climate."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.