ABSTRACT
The article presents some results of long-term comprehensive historical, archive, cartographic, bibliographic, and morphological studies on the specifics of Saint Petersburg’s historical urban-planning skyline before 1917. Systemic specifics of the city historical skyline are identified combining six typological classes of different-scale facilities (that have taken up certain spatial and role tasks in the unified skyline organization of city’s spaces during development) and forming the multi-layer, hierarchically arranged skyline of the city. Interrelated urban-planning compositional roles are studied in terms of the historical Saint Petersburg skyline formation in the structures of the semantic and symbolical environment (temples of various confessions), residential and public buildings and structures, production facilities (industrial facilities and complexes), structures of urban-planning and monumental design (memorials and monuments). Some common factors of man-made formation of skyline perception surfaces are taken into account: from the main city’s skyline to the contact perception at the level of the man’s height.
