The Cathedral (Duomo) of Florence is officially called Santa Maria del Fiore and is the end result of years of work spanning various architectural styles. The original building was started by a sculptor in 1296, then Filippo Brunelleschi added the distinctive dome between 1420 and 1436 and finally the modern facade was added between 1867 and 1887. It is apparently the 3rd largest church in the world.

Duomo di Milano is the largest gothic cathedral in the world, a bit of a cheat as it comes somewhere nearer seventh in the list of largest churches in the world. Still, on full zoom it is pretty huge and has the added sightseeing bonus of the adjacent ‘Piazza Del Duomo’ (I think I can see tourists?) and the ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele’, a covered street just to the north (it looks like a dark cross).

Thanks: Massimo, Philip R, Giampaolo Bellavite, cristian contini, Valdo, Bennet Langlotz, Dave Lartigue, Yuval, Elliot Sather, Gian Giacomo, Ron Vogel, ITALIANO, Dee, Jack & Jay

Here you can see the shadow of one of Spain’s famous Osborne bull signs. The Osborne sherry company placed these huge silhouettes of their logo on hills near major roads throughout Spain, and although there was a law passed which demanded their removal, they have become an unofficial national symbol of Spain - and today nearly a hundred of them still remain overlooking the passing motorists.

Here’s the Wikipedia page, and here’s a ground-level shot of one of the bulls.

Thanks to Christophe.

Well I really should know better.

The moment I mention the fact that Google Earth hasn’t yet been released for the Mac… I discover that Google Earth has just been released for the Mac. For all of you who, like me, have been suffering severe PC envy for months now - suffer no more! And if you’ve never seen GE in action, then you really are in for a treat.

Don’t forget, each post on this site has a ‘View in Google Earth’ link at the bottom which will open into the application - showing you placemarks for everything we’ve talked about.

Go on then, get with the downloading already!

(And for those of you who’ve been running GE for months… its finally come out of beta, so you guys should probably all download it too)