The rising wave of nationalism and xenophobia in the world triggers interest in processes underlying ethnocentric tendencies in humans. In this chapter we focus on the issue of ethnocentrism in perception of places and describe processes that facilitate the ethnocentric closure to the presence of the ‘other’ in the city space. We present data that demonstrate that one of the factors responsible for this ethnocentric closure is type of the perceived continuity of a place: essentialist vs anti-essentialist. We show, on the basis of studies carried out in cities of Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, that perception of places in terms of essentialist continuity facilitates place identity but is also a powerful trigger of the ethnocentric bias in perception of the places’ multicultural past and present. In contrast, interpretation of the place continuity as a chain of interconnected events (anti-essentialist continuity) helps to accept the ethnic and social diversity of places.