Przestrzeń autoprezentacji – przestrzeń dialogu politycznego – przestrzeń kontroli państwowej o przestrzeni publicznej Warszawy w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku

Abstract

The functioning of urban public spaces has traditionally been conditioned by three main factors: display of power, social communication and public control. Throughout the centuries public display was the most prominent element of the public space. The example of ancient Rome or Medieval Siena shows how the municipal and state authorities affected the way the public space of streets and squares was created and altered. Such interventions were performed in order to make the urban space a means of expressing power, splendour and the generosity of the authorities. The public space of Paris witnessed particularly large urban transformations and renewals starting from the 17th century that resulted in the famous restructuring of the city under the Second Empire. The example of Warsaw as the capital of the newly recreated Kingdom of Poland (after Poland’s partition between 1772 and 1795) under the formal reign of Tsar Alexander I Romanov shows how the city experienced a magnificent period of embellishment and modernization after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Senatorska Street gained much of its future importance due to the creation of three new public squares: near the Warsaw Castle, around the new theatre and in front of the new commercial buildings complex that included the National Bank. There was growing public discontent those days with the Russian way of governing the Kingdom, especially with the excesses of the informal governor, Prince Konstantin Romanov, who used some of Warsaw’s squares as if they were his own property. Public space became a field of communicating peoples‟ feelings during public ceremonies held under Russian auspices, thus including public funerals (like the one of Alexander I). The second period covered by the study (1831-1856) pictures the Russian authorities (angered by the Polish November Uprising of 1830-1831) trying to control the society by controlling the public space of the city. Tsar Nicholas I‟s policemen had everything that was happening in the streets and inside public buildings under constant surveillance and scrutinized public behaviour.