By undertaking discussion on the aspect of special forms of commemoration, we may obtain a lot of useful information about the remembrance policy of a given country. That is why the analysis of the issue of the sites of memory seems to be of key importance for understanding problems related to the state’s interpretation of the past from the perspective of an authoritarian regime, political transition and democracy. The aim of this paper is to address one of the elements of a broader issue, i.e. the study of the politics of memory. This element focuses on the presentation of the most significant sites of memory in two countries with the experience of authoritarianism – Chile and Georgia – emphasizing changes which took place in the sphere of commemoration from the beginning of democratic transformation to the moment of achieving full democracy. By describing these places we are showing the main directions and framework assumptions of the remembrance policies of Chile and Georgia, reflected in the form of spatial and visual objects of the “living history”. 

In the article, four illustrations by Aleksander Gierymski are described. These illustrations were completed for the illustrated press during Gierymski’s sojourn in Italy from 1885 to 1886. These illustrations were typical of the “Polish traces in Italy,” relating to Padua in this case, and were published in the magazines Wędrowiec and Kłosy. These illustrations show the tombs of exceptional Poles who were buried in Padua; commemorative plaques dedicated to them (in honour of Copernicus); or the monuments of Prato della Valle (Sobieski and Batory). However, in the article, based on the illustrations and the accompanying texts, and based on the artist’s correspondences (with the likes of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Michał Wiszniewski, Stanisław Dunin-Borkowski, and Władysław Bełza) and his diaries relating his time in Italy, the following issues, amongst others, will be addressed: Gierymski’s work method; the discourse (including the visual discourse) of “Polish traces in Italy” in Padua; Gierymski’s illustrations as an interpretation of the Polish lieux de mémoire in Italy. The article encourages an adoption, in the future, of a wider perspective that includes the illustrations of the “Polish traces in Italy” of other Polish artists from that period.