The untenability of the idea of St. Petersburg as a city "born from a test tube", all the construction of which was carried out according to a pre-planned plan is noted in the article. The landscapes of the historic center of the city were formed in the process of changing the urban situation during the two centuries. The evolution of the Admiralty complex is one of the examples. Originally built as a shipyard, the building was rebuilt and adapted for new purposes in the XVIII–XIX centuries. The connection of the changes with the overall process of the city development, in particular, with the improvement of the center's development and expansion of shipbuilding production is revealed. By the beginning of the reign of Alexander I, the Admiralty shipyard was a decaying production, and for the growing institutions of the Maritime Department, additional premises in the city center were required. It is noted that the reconstruction, performed by A.D. Zakharov, happened due to the financial limit, the personal instructions of Alexander I and were based on the experience gained by the architect in the development of the project complex of the Academy of Sciences on Vasilevsky island. The attention is drawn on the fact that in parallel with the reconstruction of the buildings of the Admiralty complex the transformation of adjacent areas of the territory was carried out. It is emphasized that the transformations, made around the Admiralty complex in the second half of the XIX century, "obscured" a unique work of Russian empire style – the main facade of the Admiralty – in the urban landscape. Today, the main facade of the Admiralty is tightly covered with dense greenery of the Alexander garden, which was laid out in the 1870s. The proposals on the formation of a parterre garden instead of wild mass of spontaneously overgrown trees in order to create a harmonious composition of regular landscaping and majestic architecture are given.
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