Atrastas Vilnius: kartografiniai ir sociotopografiniai miesto maketo šaltiniai
LTKnygoje „Atrastas Vilnius. Kartografiniai ir sociotopografiniai miesto maketo šaltiniai“ publikuojama Rusijos kariniuose archyvuose saugoma Vilniaus senamiestį ir priemiesčius apimanti kartografinė medžiaga, leidusi iki smulkiausių detalių atkurti prieš 200 metų egzistavusį miesto vaizdą, kurio didelės dalies šiandien jau nebepamatysime. Šis tyrimas buvo planuojamas kaip anksčiau išleistos studijos „Vilniaus miesto planai“ tęsinys, tačiau išaugo į atskirą istorinę studiją, pateikusią intriguojantį rezultatą. Lietuvių istorikai ir architektai restauratoriai Rusijos archyvuose sukauptais kadaise Rusijos imperijai priklausiusių miestų kartografijos ir ikonografijos rinkiniais domėjosi nuo XX a. šeštojo dešimtmečio. „Vladas Drėma dalį Vilniaus fasadų piešinių paskelbė knygoje „Dingęs Vilnius“, bet atliekant tyrimą paaiškėjo, jog jų yra daug daugiau, negu buvo skelbiama. Sekant ir kitų šią medžiagą tyrusių istorikų pėdomis, teko pastebėti, kad sistemingo Rusijoje susikaupusios lituanistinės medžiagos tyrimo nebuvo atliekama. Ir, matyt, todėl Vilniaus vaizdai nebuvo teisingai įvertinti“, – sako tyrimo vadovė, menotyrininkė doc. dr. Birutė Rūta Vitkauskienė.
ENThe aim of this book is to present the cartographic and iconographic sources of the first third of the 19th century of the city of Vilnius that have survived to our day in the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow and the Russian State Naval Archive in Saint Petersburg. The material encompasses the city plan prepared by the Russian military engineers and topographers during their visit to Vilnius in 1832 as well as 38 street elevation drawings depicting fasades and 13 schematic quarter drawings that were made in 1834 based on the plan. This cartographic and topographic material is regarded as the most precise and most detailed source of urban development of the old Vilnius. Here, we see the city as it was before the changes of the capitalist era, i.e., in the last quarter of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. The street elevations bearing Vilnius fasades arou¬sed the interest of Lithuanian researchers only in 1954. Photographs of several sheets were then received from Moscow. Yet a systematic study of the material remaining in Russia was not carried out and, possibly, that is why the images of Vilnius were not properly evaluated. Vladas Drėma prepared his book Lost Vilnius (first edition 1991, second - 2013) where the drawings of Vilnius fasades constitute perhaps the most prominent and most reliable iconographic source of the Old Town. As can be seen from the introduction part of his book, the author drew a fairly inaccurate picture of this collection claiming that it lacked at least one third of urban sites.It is likely that Drėma had not had all the sheets and, thus, had not included any drawings of the suburbs. Some street elevation drawings remained unidentified, none of the quarter schemes were published. Despite all the drawbacks, it is this material by Drėma that is still being referred to in the studies of the Old Town of Vilnius. Until recently, nothing was known about the master plan of Vilnius drawn in 1832 stored in the Russian State Naval Archive in Saint Petersburg. When the historian Adolfas Raulinatis visited the archive, he made a record of the call number of the plan and also compiled a general list of all the archival files that were of great interest to him. It is, however, not clear whether he had ordered the map or had merely come upon it. After contacting the archive in Saint Petersburg, it turned out that we have a significant, uninvestigated cartographic document of Vilnius. The topographers who prepared the map had chosen an innovative method of cartography - the city of Vilnius and its surroundings were first depicted using isohypses. The lieutenant of the Russian army Kozlov - who was in charge of the preparation of the drawing - indicated that intervals among isohypses corresponded to one fathom (2.13m), whereas the lowest level was the water surface of the Neris near the fortress. This enables the identification of altitudes of the entire depicted area. In many points of the plan the absolute altitude of terrain irregularities - calculating from the water surface of the Neris - is indicated by numbers in red ink.For example, there is a number 36 at the top of the Hill of Three Crosses, which would mean that the altitude of the hill from the river level was 76.68m. When Russian engineers were building the fortress in 1831, they also performed a geodetic survey of the area. Geodetic measurements were carried out not only in the city but also further from the centre, in the suburbs. The plan provides valuable information about the communications network of the city of Vilnius - not only about its streets and the already non-existent roads and paths but also about its hydrographic network, i.e., its rivers, streams, canals, their banks, lakes, ponds, and marshes. If you study the map carefully, you will certainly notice considerable changes in the hydro-urbanism of Vilnius - irretrievably lost water bodies, canals, dams, bridges, and any constructions in their vicinity. The old river bed of the Neris is clearly visible in Šnipiškės. The drawing is perhaps the only cartographic document of Vilnius presenting extensively the green areas of the city. It shows a lot of nicely arranged private orchards and parks, the landscaping of quarters and streets; gardens, arable land, meadows, forests, wastelands, clay and sand quarries are also indicated. This serves as an interesting and highly significant source of information for the researchers of the history of masonry and wood construction in Vilnius as well as the extraction of the related construction materials. The plan illustrates how the city settled in the complex terrain at the confluence of two rivers; how the natural environment restricted urban development. We see two huge green areas next to the access to the Old Town: a large park of the Sapieha Palace, the gardens of the Bernardine Monastery, the green area of Paradise Hill surrounding the Missionary Monastery and the Visitandine Convent. [...].
