With this fellowship proposal I intend to explore the cultural context of the city of Paris in the first half of the 20th century, through the analysis of a specific cultural object: the advertising poster. My research will look at these posters as “social events” that create new historical identities through a communicative and symbolic efficacy. In this way I analyze these images as a real source of documentation of social practices, and as main social actors in the communicative interactions. My work will necessarily be interdisciplinary, merging together the textual meaning sciences and a narrative approach with the history of graphic arts and social-interaction-oriented methodologies. My research will also concern the relation between art and advertising during the birth of a modern city. In general I can state that, from their beginnings in the 19th century with Manet’s posters, the relation between the poster and Paris is a primal binomial that engendered the future evolution of advertisting arts, with influences still visible today. This is true not only in Paris but also in many other European cities. This is the reason why, by studying the cultural identity of Paris, we will also be studying an important aspect of a more general European identity.