Historic urban landscape is the result of long-term interaction between people and land, and it is the product of continuous layering in the long process of urban historical development. With the continuous and dynamic evolution and development of city, historic urban landscape will inevitably change, this requires us to carry out the protection of urban historical heritages in a broader urban context and geographical environment, and to focus on the integrated development and sustainable development balance between urban historical heritages and current life. Under the continuous influence of different stages of urban historical development, historic urban landscape exhibits environmental complexity and cultural diversity. How to effectively control its “immutable” core parts and reasonably control and manage its “changeable” contemporary elements has become an important content of current research in the field of urban heritage protection. How to effectively control their “immutable” core parts and reasonably control and manage their “changeable” contemporary elements has become an important topic of current research in the field of urban heritage protection. Historic urban landscape not only provide a new concept and perspective for observing and recognizing contemporary urban historical heritage, but also provide a new method and tool for protecting and managing dynamic and constantly changing urban historical heritage resources. The evolution and development of cities is a continuous and dynamic process, in which not only modern and comfortable living environments and rapidly changing urban landscapes are created, but also urban heritages are destroyed. The protection of urban heritages is also facing new challenges. In the new era, city needs new development, which requires the development and utilization of urban resources, inevitably conflicting with the historical landscape environment. The original spatial pattern and landscape form of the city have been destroyed, buildings and streets rich in regional characteristics and historical context have gradually disappeared, and the environment full of historical information has gradually changed beyond recognition. In the face of various complex situations brought about by globalization, urbanization, and rapid social development in the new century, the living environment of urban historical landscapes is very worrying. Faced with these new situations, it is necessary for us to deeply analyze and study historic urban landscape. By effectively identifying its landscape characteristics and recording the state and evolution of complex layers, we can recognize its value and understand its significance. This will help us grasp the most essential and core features in the dynamic change process of historic urban landscape through different historical layers, making the overall structure and development context of historic urban landscape more clearly identified, thereby providing new methods and means for comprehensively identifying, evaluating, protecting, and managing historic urban landscape in the context of rapid urban development. In this context, the article focuses on how to conduct characteristic recognition and layered cognition of historic urban landscape. Firstly, the author combs and classifies the constituent elements of historic urban landscape from both external forms and internal values, while paying attention to the continuous evolution of the same historical landscape elements through time and space, and conducting research and analysis on the factors that affect change. Secondly, through these sorted and classified urban historical landscape elements, the author further analyzes the natural environmental characteristics, spatial location characteristics, architectural characteristics, regional characteristics, cultural characteristics, and other aspects contained therein from the material, social, and cultural levels. Finally, the author conducts an “anatomical” slice analysis of the historic urban landscape using the method of historical staging, decomposing it into several different layers, and then interprets and analyzes the historical landscape of a single layer. Through various historical sections, the author understands and grasps the entire process of dynamic changes in the historic urban landscape, establishes the time and space relationships of the entire process of dynamic changes, and explores the laws and values contained therein. The characteristic recognition and layered cognition of historic urban landscapes can help balance and manage the relations between urban heritage protection and contemporary urban development, and enable historical landscapes to glow with new vitality in the new stage of urban development. Using the concept of “layer” to recognize and grasp the core characteristics of historic urban landscape, both in terms of the breadth and depth of the temporal dimension and the spatial dimension, it provides potential possibilities for the investigation, classification, and value connotation research of historic urban landscapes, as well as their integration and utilization as cultural resources. Nanjing is a typical representative of a historical city in China. Based on the above analytical logic, this article conducts an empirical analysis using the city of Nanjing as an example. Combining the historical staging method, it analyzes the historical landscape of the city of Nanjing in the context of its main historical cycles of development, sorts out its historical layers and spatiotemporal evolution in stages, and explores its essential characteristics. Finally, the article puts forward the strategies for the protection and innovative utilization of historic urban landscape in Nanjing, such as constructing a grid system of anchor points and realizing the benign mutual infiltration between the heritage area and the new area; weaving the texture of landscape space, and strengthening cultural identity and collective memory; and establishing the endogenous logic of stratification and evolution, and paying attention to multi-cultural expression, which is to achieve the sustainable development of the historic urban landscape in Nanjing City.