The paper is a response to the question about a woman's experience of the city. Accordingly, the authoress analyses the ways Elfriede Jelinek's heroines behave. She contasts them with a male perspective as is recorded in Elias Canetti's prose. The paper consists of four parts. Part one is entitled 'Gynecriticism in Polish-Poetics, or Who Replaced the Flâneur in the Post-modern City' and it presents the history of a 'flâneur' and the reasons why he does not find a place for himself in the post-modern city. Part two, entitled 'City as an Extension of the Senses - on the Aesthetics of the Space' reconstructs Jelinek's heroines' experience of the city. Part three, entitled 'Fugitive and her Plan of the City' shows how this experience is rooted in the topography and semiotics of the city. Part four 'Stadtluft macht frei' contains an extended summary with an attempt to interpret the vision of the city and woman in Jelinek's writing. The city presented here is Vienna. The dynamic development of its architecture over the twentieth century can be seen in the attached photos.