Secrets of Old Parks: Encrypted Messages in Landscape Design

This article proposes a semiotic framework for analyzing historic parks as complex cultural texts. Through a comparative analysis of regular and landscape parks, it reveals how landscape design, architecture, and dendrology were consciously used to encode philosophical, political, and aesthetic ideas. The study examines the fundamental difference in the representation of power and order in regular (French) and landscape (English) parks, reflecting shifts in European consciousness from absolutism to the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Small architectural forms — ruins, grottoes, hermitages, temples of friendship — are analyzed as key semiotic units and active participants in performative practices. A case study of the Arkhangelskoye estate demonstrates how an alley can be "read" as a philosophical narrative with a clear emotional arc. The practical significance for restoration, heritage management, and contemporary design is discussed.