Tsarskoye Selo Military Necropolis in the Cultural and Historical Context of the Development of Sofia

Abstract

The article explores the actual for St Petersburg agglomeration problem of preserving and using specialized objects of landscape architecture-historically equipped cemeteries, some of which have the status of a historical and cultural monument. The solution of this problem involves conducting interdisciplinary studies of these architectural and planning forms in order to establish their real value. There are objects the oldest cemeteries of the Pushkin district — Alexandrovskoye, Kuzminskoye, Moskovskaya Slavyanka, Pavlovskoye, Pokrovskoye, Shusharskoye and the most studied and therefore well-known to the Kazanskoye urban community in Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo). The emergence and functioning of the latter is related to the cultural, historical and urban development of Tsarskoye Selo Sofia. The article presents the results of historical, architectural, urban planning and cultural researches carried out by the authors using a significant number of primary sources: textual, iconographic, statistical, cartographic and planographic archival documents, a large volume of which was first introduced into scientific circulation. The result of the work was the identification of the military memorial object of national significance — the Tsarskoye Selo military necropolis as an independent architectural and planning form of special purpose. The features of its formation are determined as part of cemeteries of the Tsarskoye Selo Military Hospital (mid-19th century), the Tsarskoye Selo military Cemetery (1887), the new cemetery of the Tsarskoye Selo garrison (1914) and the Tsarskoye Selo Fraternal Cemetery (1914). The specifics of its institutionalization and design and construction implementation, the patterns of spatial organization and architectural and landscape design, the trends of modern use are established. The study is carried out taking into account the phenomenology of the gradotypological transformation of Tsarskoye Selo Sofia: the district city of the St Petersburg province, the paramilitary suburb of Tsarskoye Selo, the prestigious residential district of Pushkin.