Abstract
The author presents the sensational popular press as a type of source which in its time transmitted urban memory on a large scale. He demonstrates the role of popular culture in forming collective memory, using professional literature and also the example of the Prague Illustrated Courier (1893-1918) - the first cheap mass produces pictorial Czech daily.
Its emergence was connected with the development of popular culture in the Czech lands at the turn of the 20th century. Industrialisation and urbanisation caused a movement of many people from the countryside to the great cities.
This process led to the disappereance of many traditional cultural bonds, and the new urban population therefore produced a socially cementing culture which satisfied its needs and demands. The mass-market press formed and at the same tome preserved a new big-city memory, and it was present at the transition to a mediated dissemination of the collectove memory of the broadest social layers.