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A 2004 Notte Bianca event at the Colosseum in Rome.

WHEN Paris held its first Nuit Blanche — a frenetic all-night, multivenue cultural bash — in 2002, few could have imagined that five years later White Night fever would be sweeping Europe’s capitals, and spreading to other cities.

From Rome, which will hold its fifth White Night on Sept. 8, to Madrid (Sept. 22), Toronto (Sept. 29), Brussels (also Sept. 29), Paris and La Valletta, Malta (Oct. 6) and dozens of other cities, collective insomnia is in, at least for one night a year.

Between opera recitals, jazz jam sessions, contemporary-art shows, circus acts, theatrical declamations and postmodern installations, the offerings are endless.

In Europe, the initiative has been so successful that several cities have formed a consortium, White Nights Europe, to time their all-night parties on successive weekends. In a perfect, newly unified European world, partygoers would migrate from one capital to the other, dancing the night away.

“That was the idea of banding together, to boost tourism,” said Giovanna Marinelli, who heads the municipal department in Rome that is responsible for cultural policies. The capital alliance — which was formed last year — has also allowed organizers to exchange organizational tips as well as promote the other White Night events.

Technically, a White Nights Europe Charter binds these capitals (Paris, Rome, Riga, Brussels, Madrid and, starting this year, Bucharest) to respect certain tenets, including that events will be free and will be organized throughout a city, not just in its center. But a lot depends on cash flow and local ambitions.

“We all try to respect the rules, but each country does it in its own way,” said Esther Beck, the main coordinator of the Nuit Blanche in Brussels. “In Rome and Paris, the budgets are bigger so they tend to have more spectacular events.”

The European White Nights cities are also supposed to share a common artistic project, which this year is the creation of a “lounge” area in the heart of each city. In Rome, organizers will recreate an Italian garden in the Piazza Capranica, near the Pantheon, that will adhere to a Renaissance model.

The lounge is meant to be an oasis of calm amid the turmoil that is sure to sweep Rome’s center: past editions of the White Night have brought as many as two million people into the streets, according to organizers. “It will be a decompression area where people can relax,” said Ms. Marinelli of the outdoor Roman lounge.

Some respite may also be found in the city’s museums and art galleries, many of which remain open around the clock.

For its lounge area, Madrid will set up a patio in the Conde Duque Cultural Center, one of the event’s main sites. It will be a truly pan-European project: The space will be designed by a group of young Madrilenian architects called Basurama, working with recycled materials (basura means rubbish in Spanish); a Dutch group will be on hand to customize second-hand clothes; a British collective will project short films by European filmmakers; and the music — electronic mostly — will be performed by various European musicians.

Each city also has its own theme, which “responds to the cultural vocation and history of the city,” Ms. Marinelli said. In Rome, the chosen theme is Italy’s nascent multicultural society, with more than 1,000 artists from 29 countries participating.

Brussels settled on two themes: a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Union (as the European Economic Community), and the intriguing-sounding “Seven Capital Sins.”

“It’s a play on words,” said Ms. Beck, who explained that artists were asked to create works of art that revealed “the sins of the city — like pollution, noise, aggressiveness, violence.”

Despite the sobering theme, it should not be gloomy, with all-night dancing in unusual spots like a train station, the Gare du Congrès.

Brussels was one of the first cities to follow Paris’s lead, holding its first White Night in 2003. Past editions have been very successful “as long as there’s no rain,” Ms. Beck said.

Details about the Parisian Nuit Blanche are still scarce. What little emerges on the Paris event’s Web site (www.nuitblanche.paris.fr) is that the axis of the events will follow the course of the No. 14 Métro line, from the Batignolles neighborhood in the northwest part of the city through the city center to Les Olympiades in the southeast.

In Toronto, the second annual Nuit Blanche (www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca), like the first, will highlight contemporary art, with three curators and 195 projects scheduled to light up the night on Sept. 29. “We wanted to provide an opportunity for the arts community to show what it’s up to and what artists are creating,” said Marilyn Nickel, a spokeswoman for the city.

Toronto joined the White Night fray after a visit from Paris city officials who ended up assisting with logistics and organization.

“They were very helpful when it came to things like audience response or security,” Ms. Nickel said. “They had expertise regarding things that work and things that don’t work, they brought all that to the table. It’s a massive undertaking, working with so many partners to bring it all together, but when it all happens it’s magical.”

As the festivals have multiplied, in many cases so have the offerings in each city. In Rome, the first White Night festival in 2003 presented 100 events. This year, there are 400.

In Brussels (www.nuitblanche07.be), on the other hand, organizers have taken the opposite tack, halving the events sponsored last year to a neat 100.

“There were too many to choose from last year,” said Ms. Beck in a telephone interview. “People missed out on a lot. It’s impossible to do everything.”

Rome (www.lanottebianca.it) is trying to capitalize on the all-night party’s potential tourism draw by planning a full program of events for the weekend. These include a concert by the Italian pop icon Lucio Dalla at the Villa Borghese and a reading from “The Aeneid” — in Italian — on the Piazza del Campidoglio (City Hall) on Friday evening, Sept. 7, as a sort of curtain raiser.

“It’s another way to promote tourism that worked very well when we first tried it last year,” Ms. Marinelli said. Spreading the events over two days “was also a good way of decongesting” the city.

Statistics on people who travel specifically for the White Nights are not available. But recent turnouts suggest that the formula works. That’s why in Italy, at least, dozens of Italian cities, including Genoa, Naples, Milan and many smaller tourist hubs like Verbania and Viterbo have begun their own all-night festivals.

“The White Night is more than the sum of several concerts or plays or performances,” said Francesco Moltoni, the city official responsible for event planning in Viterbo. “It’s the best way to get people to rediscover their city.”