ZABYTKOWE NAWIERZCHNIE ULIC W SZCZECINIE

Recently it has become customary to describe street surfaces as their 'fourth dimension', 'floor' or 'horizontal elevation'. These terms testify to the growing role played by this particular element of town outfitting which for years has been forgotten and treated in a purely utilitarian manner associated solely with communication: street traffic and pedestrians. The very nature of the streets depended on their geographic location and changed with the progress of civilisation and the expansion of human adobes. The most popular form of historical nineteenth century surfaces was stone - the heritage of the experiences and tradition of the industrialization epoch. Originally, use was made of the so-called wild pavement, i. e. cobblestones which have survived mainly in the outskirts and small towns. Larger centres tried to grant their streets a more refined appearance by resorting to dressed stone and differentiated paving. Not until the 1980s did certain environments perceive street paving as an element of valuable historical development. The state of the preservation of historical pavements and streets in Szczecin has been examined in the course of two inventories carried out in 1999 and 2004, verifying the universal opinion about their unsatisfactory technical state and predominantly disclosing the enormous and variegated resources (project, material and aesthetic).