VISUAL AXIOLOGY OF THE POST-KIEV URBAN MODEL

The article is dedicated to the study of the axiological transformation of the leading urban planning model of the Russian Middle Ages in the second half of the 12th century. The article shows that the construction program of Andrei Bogolyubsky, which was supposed to solve the problem of architectural design of the idea of Vladimir’s priority over Kiev, led to an ori-entation towards Western architectural samples, which, nevertheless, underwent an obvious adaptation to the established Russian-Byzantine artistic tradition. Expressing quite clear ideo-logical priorities of the duke and dukedom, the urban environment of Vladimir acquired a visually fixed axiological peculiarity. This axiology, new for Russia, indicates the start of the original Russian urban planning model transformation: the transformation of sacredness is gradually losing its exclusive cultural and semiotic meaning, and acquiring a vivid political emphasis. That is why the prototype-city, having lost its sacred character, loses its former value and therefore becomes a subject to cruel destruction. The purposeful and meaningful attempt of Duke Andrei to deprive Kiev of the character and function of “Jerusalem” and to build a new city as an alternative to the old sacred center demonstrates the beginning of de-struction of the Jerusalem urban matrix and lays the initial foundation for the future theory of the “third Rome”.

medieval urbanism, axiology of city, Russian urban planning models, sacred semiotics of urban space, North-Eastern Russia, city of Vladimir, Andrei Bogolyubsky, Romanesque architecture, “third Rome”