This book explores the various ways imperial rule constituted and shaped the cities of Eastern Europe until World War I in the Tsarist, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires.

In these three empires, the cities served as hubs of imperial rule: their institutions and infrastructures enabled the diffusion of power within the empires while they also served as the stages where the empire was displayed in monumental architecture and public rituals. To this day, many cities possess a distinctively imperial legacy in the form of material remnants, groups of inhabitants, or memories that shape the...