School textbooks written by a Spanish erudite and pedagogue Juan Luis Vives were used in schools of Protestant denominations in Royal Prussia – in Gdańsk, Toruń, Elbląg, but also in other towns and cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth– for teaching Latin. Nicolaus Volckmar, of German descent, a Polis language teacher at the Academic Gymnasium in Gdańsk, utilized the structure and themes of Vives’ dialogues Exercitatio linguae latinae (1538) for teaching the Polish language. In this manner, paradoxically, the “phrasebook” of the Spanish humanist, as well as its subsequent editions, still in the 18th century was used by Gdańsk schoolers of German origin to learn the language which they needed for everyday communication in the community of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Gdańsk. The Vives-Volckmar phrasebook was undoubtedly used by Arnold von Holten, later a lifetime mayor of the city, sent on a diplomatic mission to Spain by the Hanseatic League.

The article presents the history of the competition and design of the building originally intended for the Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Lublin (currently the Centre for the Meeting of Cultures). Both the concepts of the location of the building and urban conditions were discussed, as well as various conceptual designs of the theatre, awarded and distinguished in an architectural competition at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. In the further part of the article, the concept of the experimental scene, proposed by Kazimierz Braun in the early 1970s, is discussed. The background for the reconstruction of the history of the design and construction of the building are changes in the style and arrangement of the modern theatre architecture, with particular emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe.