ABSTRACT
The main aim of the chapter is to trace the use of history in contemporary urban space in towns situated in the Polish border region of Lower Silesia. The public character of the past’s presence in these towns is far from spontaneous. On the contrary, the combination of the influence of national models of historical education and decisions of local authorities after 1945 created a fairly coherent approach to creating an ideological message directed at people reading and experiencing towns’ topographies as symbolical texts. Without exceptions, elements of the national version of the past dominate in the urban landscape. This tendency persists there despite radical changes to political life in 1989. It is visible in the names of streets and the meaning of monuments erected or re-arranged after the expulsion of the German population that took place in 1945–1947.
