The article connects two issues: the city as text and neoclassical trends in urban design in the second half of the 20th century. These issues are presented on the examples of ideal cities: Washington 2000 – a design of Leon Krier, Nowa Huta and the residential complex of Ricardo Bofill in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. As a continuation of the ideal European city Shanghainese Lingang is presented designed by GMP.

The term of melancholy has left the domain of human psyche becoming a contemporary philosophical experience. In contemporaneity it appears as such in creating architectural space, showing its diverse faces – melancholic subjects, poetics of space associated with an issue of duration – melancholy of monuments or melancholic ruins. Examples of the phenomenon of melancholy in architecture, described in the article, show its various incarnations, both in built and drawn space – architecture widely understood as: buildings, urban spaces, land art and artistic interventions in built environment.

The paper aims to analyse the relationship between the city space and the art present in public spaces and narrative located therein. Analysis of selected examples of contemporary art in urban space and literature allows the conclusion, that interdisciplinary narrativity descending from a literary work, allows for the transfer of meanings from public art objects to the city space and individual narratives of recipients. Not just the meanings, that the artists intend to convey, but also the meanings individually interpreted by those, who observe the work.