Miasto przetworzone – paryska fantasmagoria Waltera Benjamina
Reshaped City – Walter Benjamin’s Phantasmagoria of Paris

Summary/Abstract: In the Walter Benjamin's works the modern city is one of the most important and constantly present themes. Due to it's sudden metamorphosis brought by nearly total reconstruction in 19'th century, Paris was made a model on which and through which Benjamin has shown decay of totality once united by tradition, creation of a new form of experience as well as modern principles of living in the urban space. The New Paris is a city created for an appreciating eye; the town full of dreams. This dreamlike, phantasmagoric aspect of Paris is represented in the arcades, those sensual and seducing streets defined by trade. The nineteenth century is a period when arcades bring about collectivity to dwell into the ever deeper dream. Arcades themselves are shown as an "objective materialization of phantasmagoria" – mythical and equivocal, simultaneously the street and home, where merchandise are shown like ornamental homewares, shining and seductive. Arcades are material dream.

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