La disaggregazione dello spazio urbano plurilingue e la rimozione dell’heritage culturale “allogeno” nell’Europa centrale e sudorientale

The spread of the idea of nationalism across 19th century East-Central and South-Eastern Europe led to a progressive division of the urban space according to ethno-linguistic/religious cleavages and to an ostentatious demarcation of it through a variety of symbols. The obsession for “purity” in the new-born national states set off the systematic removal of all traces of rival groups from the city landscape. Based on evidence from the cultural history of Slavic peoples in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe the path will be briefly charted that transformed the originally multicultural and multilingual Austrian and Ottoman urban centres into monocultural and monolingual capital cities.