1 Paweł Czajkowski Barbara Pabjan 1 Postrzeganie elementów dziedzictwa architektonicznego Wrocławia przez uczniów wrocławskich szkół średnich Perception of the architectural heritage elements of Wroclaw by the students of Wroclaw high schools Wrocław is a very interesting case of functioning of a collective memory and references to history. Due to its complicated history resulting from multi-cultural character, a collective memory cannot be attributed to one specific social community that lives in a given city at a particular time. Wrocław as a significant space and a crucial element of the cultural memory can become and indeed it is a point of reference for the collective identity (and for history too) of various nations. Apart from the Poles – residents of Wrocław – also Czechs, Austrians, Germans and Jews lived in Wrocław and co-created the image, history, politics and significance of the city in the past (not to mention ethnic and national minorities living in the city now). Multidimensionality of the cultural and collective memory is complemented by a sociological assumption of the researchers – the works of which we shall refer to – that the collective memory of the present residents of Wrocław does not have and cannot have homogenous character either. Therefore, we can say that it constitutes a conglomerate of various meanings in the same way as the Wrocław community is diverse socially. The case of the city itself is extremely interesting for yet another reason. Namely, with reference to a constructivist manner of understanding memory originating from M. Halbwachs’ tradition, we treat the past as a social construct which is a function of a particular historical situation. The past is created when it becomes a subject of references [1]. History as an objective sequence of facts in the social awareness dimension does not exist due to any hermeneutical conditions. Each community or social group in certain conditions creates its own specific interpretation of the past and history. And this is exactly an interpretation. The most important observation I would like to draw attention to refers to a significant discrepancy in functioning of the collective memory between intellectual and political elites of the city and average citizens. In the case of elites, the collective memory becomes an element of deliberate and relatively planned actions (not necessarily consistent) referring to the selected aspects of the town history and leading to the construction of a particular image of the city as a multi-cultural, open, tolerant and therefore buoyant, dynamic and development directed social space. Here, it would be adequate to refer to the terminology of distinction by Aleide Assmann [2]. Not going into details of wide interpretation comments, A. Assmann made a distinction of forms of collective references to the past which can have a significant influence on the existence of this collectiveness. We can talk about three forms and at the same time levels of memory – a communication memory (the most basic – individual memories passed on to next generations), a collective memory (a higher level of the generation memory complemented with an initial process of institutionalization, for example, emergence of political institutions, an attribute of a particular community with established elements of social solidarity and integration) and a cultural memory (the highest level of institutionalization of references to the past exceeding collective affective density of the contents and based mainly on the external media and institutions). In line with these determinations, we can discuss the nature of the 1 Paweł Czajkowski – lecturer at the Institute of Sociology of Wrocław University; Barbara Pabjan – lecturer at the Institute of Sociology of Wrocław University