The Austro-Hungarian Ring Boulevards as the Space for Representation of Identities

The public space of the city was always the most important place for representation of social, national, religious and other kinds of identities. Today‘s multitude of identities and the speed of their change require new models of their coexistence within central public space of the city. Austro-Hungarian architects have already been confronted with similar issues in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries. They used the space of the former defensive city walls or other vacant spaces for creating the loop with public buildings, places, streets, parks and monuments that represented cultural and social richness of Austro-Hungarian population and complex structure of authority. Their methods and strategies can be used in today’s practice of city planning.