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The political crackdown during the 20th Century finds in the International Events a special place for the hosting Countries to spread their ideologies to the visitors and to all the other Countries attending the event. National Pavilions become the subject of propaganda, and their architectural language became an important part of the collective identity's reclaimed logic, even if it wasn't always real. Paris International Exposition of 1937 is a paradigmatic case: it's a mirror of that time and of the prewar period's international tensions. Born under the auspices of peace, it finally results the most relevant expression of the relation between Power and Architecture.

This paper studies the influence of great contemporary Expositions on the transformation of cities and of territories, developing some aspects we consider relevant of these events: their growing relevance in urban contemporary politics and the urban and architectural project as creator of the regeneration of abandoned or obsolete areas. Against the short duration of these events, the positive and negative effects, like the definition of new urban and territorial domains, the modernization of infrastructures and services, the impulse of private stakeholders toward building lands and the consolidation of City-Brand in tourism nets among others, have a much longer duration, and depend on the urban context, on the public and private stakeholders and on organizational agreements. We study the evolution of Expo '92 in Seville, Expo '98 in Lisbon and the Swiss Expo 02, very different in their conception and context, and that results explanatory of actual methodologies and models, and of the results according with their adaptation to the urban and citizens' needs. The relation between event and urban renewal allow us to study the theme of urban transformation strategies and the theme of the new image of the city and the territory after the event.