Zamość, città ideale

The paper presents an ethnosemiotic investigation of Zamość, a Polish ideal city designed by the Italian architect Bernardo Morando. The city represents a heterotopy of connection with the architect’s hometown Padova and Italian Renaissance culture. The analysis reconstructs different phenomenological points of view on the city in order to describe its multiform identity. In particular, the secular centre (economy, university) is opposed to the periphery (ethnicity, religion); the connection between the two extremes of the category is assured by political power (Zamoyski palace), placed in an eccentric position. In terms of a topology of culture (Lotman), the city is a border, constituting both an access route and a bastion, and represents the constitutive ambivalence of Polish identity.