Skyline

A skyline is the view of a city from afar. It is also called a profile or silhouette. By soft area one means the area within the city limits. The word skyline comes from English and literally means "line of sky".

From a distance, one sees the large buildings in a city, but also mountains. One thinks above all of television towers and particularly tall high-rise buildings, the skyscrapers. In the past, it was church spires and the towers of the city walls that could be seen from afar. Some people also think of a skyline as the outline of a landscape, for example in the mountains.

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, there are actually hardly any cities where one speaks of a skyline. There are rather few skyscrapers in our cities. One exception is the Hessian city of Frankfurt am Main: many banks have built skyscrapers there. In China and the USA, on the other hand, almost all larger cities have a skyline.