The Château d’If is on the small island of If, in the Bay of Marseille, France. It was completed in 1531, and was originally intended as a defence against attacks from the sea, however it never had to fight off an actual attack, and later became one of France’s most notorious prisons. The Château became internationally famous in the 19th century when Alexander Dumas used it as a setting in his classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

In our thumbnail you can see the small square building itself, and also the shadows of its three towers (Wikipedia page).

<img src=’http://googlesightseeing.com/wp-content/chateaudIf.jpg’ alt=’Château d’If’ />

Thanks: w00d

This is the Colgante Transporter Bridge across the river Nervión in Portugalete, Spain. This extremely rare type of bridge (apparently there’s only 8 of them left in the world) is designed to carry a segment of roadway across a river, and you can see quite clearly in this photo why they came up with this design.

This particular bridge was the first of its type ever built, way back in 1893… well not this actual bridge, as unfortunately it was destroyed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War (three days before it ended) but those crafty Spaniards had in fixed again by 1941.

In our thumbnail you can see the bridge’s gondola, which in the 1890s was fitted out to accommodate first and second class passengers, separated by a net… sounds a bit like British Rail if you ask me.

The entire history of the Colgante Transporter Bridge is available at the official site.

Thanks to Daniel.