The article generalizes and systematizes international practices of culture and arts marketing in brand-building of cities for the purpose of revealing the circumstances necessary for successful cultural policy aiming to build a positive image of a city as a cultural center in relation to Volgograd. There’s a description of branding essence and reasons for popularity of this practice nowadays. The mechanisms of building identity of the place with the use of local cultural resources are studied. The paper also focuses on the key factors of effective cultural policy and the main difficulties in problem solving of renovation of the war memorial status of Volgograd.
