The Colosseum (or Coliseum) was built in 72 AD and is 160 ft high with 80 entrances. It held more than 50,000 spectators and was actively used for gladiator fights for 400 years.

The Colosseum obviously featured in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, although was digitally recreated to its former glory.

Thanks: A whole heap of people called things like John, Jason, Ben, Paul & Jeff

The Millennium Dome is a large dome on the Greenwich peninsula in the Docklands area of London. The dome was built to house a millennium celebration “exhibition” that featured the almost-stolen De Beers Millennium Star diamond and a bunch of other stuff that required a large amount of queuing (from my memory, at least).

Thanks: Ross Young, Greg Askins & Nels N Nelson

The London Eye is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames. You can see for 25 miles in each direction when the capsule is at its highest - an amazing height of 135 meteres. The wheel can carry in excess of 15,000 passengers each day, and is one of London’s biggest attractions.

According to the official site it is not a Ferris Wheel, ‘… for three reasons, firstly that its capsules are enclosed, secondly that they are positioned on the outside of the wheel and thirdly that the whole structure is supported by an A-Frame from one side only.’

Thanks: Bill Kendrick, Ben Scott, Michael Davis, Jen & many others

The Eiffel Tower needs no introduction as we’ve all seen it a thousand times in pictures, movies and TV. The odd angle of this aerial photo makes the tower seem sideways and upside down but you can’t miss the great shadow.

Thanks: rob blum, Parker, Keith, Gonzalo & many others

Today Google quietly updated its map service to add high-resolution aerial photography for much more of the globe than the previous limited coverage of North America. New additions include Scotland, Iceland, Kuwait and many, many more.

Here at Google Sightseeing we’ll be featuring new sights from all these countries and will be accepting submission of the cool things that our readers find. If you find somewhere cool please make sure to read our FAQ about getting the correct web address and make sure to include the city and country for your location on our submissions form.

Our final post of the 1st annual Google Sightseeing ‘Volcano Day’ is the simply incredible San Francisco volcanic field in northern Arizona.

The field covers 4700 square kilometres and contains 600 volcanoes less than 6 million years old, including the SP Crater, which is shown in our thumbnail. Check out the lava flow! It extends 4 miles northwards from the cone and is around 100 feet thick (make sure you zoom in, it’s in hi-res ).

Unfortunately the Sunset Crater is in low-resolution. It’s the area’s youngest volcano, having erupted lesss than 1,000 years ago, and it’s been a National Monument since 1930.

There’s a great page about the whole area on the U.S. Geological Survey site, and they also have a particularly good photo of the SP crater lava flow.

Many thanks to Jeff Alu, Matt Van Pelt, Jeff Burton, Eric, John King, Scott Jones, Kevin Wampler and Stephanie and to anyone else who I missed throughout these volcano posts. Thanks everyone!

This is Mount Rainier, outside Seattle, Washington (fairly close to the previously posted Mount Saint Helens). At 4,392 metres, Mount Rainier is the highest mountain volcano in the continental contiguous U.S., and although there is no imminent risk of eruption, geologists expect that the volcano will erupt again.

Update: Post edited to reflect that I was mostly wrong. Thanks to Steve Ransom and others

Mount Rainer the tallest mountain in the continental US? Sorry, no. That distinction is held by Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska at 6,194 meters. If you’re just counting “contiguous” US, then the winner is Mt. Whitney in California at 4,418 meters. And if you meant volcano instead of mountain, then again Alaska wins with Mount Bona at 5,005 meters. But perhaps you meant tallest volcano in the contiguous US. Then Rainer wins. (There is some controversy about the difference between contiguous and continental, but every Alaskan knows the difference quite well.)

Thanks: Mark McKnight, gniv and daniel.