During the nineteenth century, a change developed in the way architectural objects from the distant past were viewed by contemporaries. Such edifices, be they churches, castles, chapels or various other buildings, were not only admired for their aesthetic values, but also for the role they played in ancient times, and their role as reminders of important events from the national past. Architectural heritage often was (and still is) an important element of nation building. Authors address the process of building national myths around certain architectural objects. National narratives are questioned, as is the position architectural heritage played in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

The book offers a wide perspective on the history of the capital of the Kingdom of Poland. The Kingdom was a small part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which passed under the rule of the Russian Tsars. The book presents the life of the streets, squares and parks, special events, the changing infrastructure and the rise of consumerism. It describes how Warsaw became a monumental capital in a short period of 1815-1830. The main plot of the book is the political dimension of the space: publicly expressed sympathies and aversions towards politicians, rising control and Russification, acts of loyalty and anti-Russian demonstrations to regain hegemony in the early 1860s. The author reflects on the question if the modern definitions of the public space can be applied to a historic city.

The Yearbook of Transnational History is dedicated to disseminating pioneering research in the field of transnational history. This third volume is dedicated to the transnational turn in urban history. It brings together articles that investigate the transnational and transatlantic exchanges of ideas and concepts for urban planning, architecture, and technology that served to modernize cities across East and Central Europe and the United States. This collection includes studies about regionals fairs as centers of knowledge transfer in Eastern Europe, about the transfer of city planning among developing urban centers within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, about the introduction of the Bauhaus into American society, and about the movement for constructing paved roads to connect cities on a global scale. The volume concludes with a historiographical article that discusses the potential of the transnational perspective to urban history. The articles in this volume highlight the movement of ideas and practices across various cultures and societies and explore the relations, connections, and spaces created by these movements. The articles show that modern cities across the European continent and North America emerged from intensive exchanges of ideas for almost every aspect of modern urban life.