The authors study the covering rough sets by topological methods. They combine the covering rough sets and topological spaces by means of defining some new types of spaces called covering rough topological (CRT) spaces based on neighbourhoods or complementary neighbourhoods. As the separation axioms play a fundamental role in general topology, they introduce all these axioms into covering rough set theories and thoroughly study the equivalent conditions for every separation axiom in several CRT spaces. They also investigate the relationships between the separation axioms in these special spaces and reveal these relationships through diagrams in different CRT spaces.