The starting point for any kind of history – be it national, regional or urban – is never just an abstract question for the literati to discuss. Debates about origins and succession inevitably bear the marks of the political demands of the present. Even the most refined academic discussions are framed, sometimes barely perceptibly but more often than quite palpably, by the historians` political inclinations and expectations of certain socio-cultural groups. In the case of Ekaterinoslav-Dnipropetrovsk, one of the key and still unresolved semiotic challenges has long been the question of the starting point of the city`s history. The city celebrated anniversaries of its birth twice, once in 1887 and again in 1976, and this inconsistency between milestone anniversaries does not escape notice.