Santiago Calatrava is a renowned Spanish architect whose work we’ve admired in the past on Google Sightseeing. We’re going to take a more in-depth look at his innovative work in two areas, beginning today with bridges.

One of Calatrava’s earliest bridge commissions helped cement his international reputation for civic engineering, the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona. Like the vast majority of his work, the structure is entirely white.

Part of the city’s pre-Olympic development, the bridge incorporates steel cables, a method used in many of Calatrava’s subsequent designs, including the Puente del Alamillo in Seville, which features a 142m tall mast.

Similar in design to the previously featured Sundial Bridge, the Puente del Alamillo was part of Seville’s preparations for Expo ‘92.

In Buenos Aires the 100m long Puente de la Mujer uses the same technique, but the mast is angled forward rather than backwards. In this case, the mast also supports a section of bridge that pivots through 90 degrees to allow boat traffic to pass, coming to rest at the stabilising pylon visible in the river to the south.

While Calvatara’s bridges are generally well received and establish themselves as symbols of the communities where they are built, there have been some exceptions. In Bilbao, the Zubizuri has met with opposition on several fronts.

The Zubizuri’s deck includes glass bricks which apparently break easily and become very slippery in the rain, additionally, the placement of the bridge on the river edge (rather than the elevated city street) made it somewhat impractical to actually use, so the city had to build a connecting walkway – the curved structure to the left of the bridge. Calatrava actually felt this was detrimental to his creation, and amazingly, won €30,000 through his legal action.

Furthermore, Calatrava’s Ponte della Costituzione in Venice – shown as under construction on Google Maps, but actually completed a year ago – has also met with controversy for being too expensive, inaccessible to anyone unable to traverse its many steps, and for being too close to one of the city’s classic bridges across the Grand Canal.

Named for one of Dublin’s most famous writers¹, the James Joyce bridge has had a better reception from locals, perhaps because the design mirrors many of the other arched bridges across the Liffey. However like the Zubizuri, the James Joyce has a glass block walkway² – though it’s possible that the frosted finish to the glass makes it safer to traverse in Irish weather!

Another of Calatrava’s bridges, named for another writer – Samuel Beckett – is under construction further east. It will be a swing bridge very similar to Puente de la Mujer.

Finally, the spectacular Chords Bridge in Jerusalem is one of Calatrava’s more notable recent bridge designs, but unfortunately it’s not yet visible on Google Maps.

We’ll continue this examination of Calatrava’s work in a later post, looking at some of his most famous and notable buildings.

Thanks to Redder Zooming.

The Millennium Dome was an exhibition centre built in London to celebrate the first year of the new millennium¹. It has since been converted into the O2 entertainment complex.

Whatever the name, we’re very impressed with the shadows cast by the twelve 100m tall pylons, which are intended to represent a clock face, a nod to the Greenwich Meridian which runs nearby.

The pylons anchor cables which support gleaming white plastic-coated fibreglass panels. At 365m across (representing the number of days in the year), this is the largest dome of its type in the world. It reaches a height of 50m, and encloses an area of more than 80,000 square metres. Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond fell down the outside of The Dome during the opening sequence of The World Is Not Enough.

The uniformity of The Dome is interrupted by one flaw – a large hole had to be left in the structure to accommodate a ventilation shaft from the Blackwall Tunnel which runs below the site.

The Millennium Experience opened on January 1, 2000. It was conceived as a showcase of British excellence – a blend of art, performance and exploration in 14 zones funded by a top-notch collection of sponsors eager to attach their brand to the promise of the new millennium.

However, the reality² was that, despite the project running considerably over budget, visitors often found the queues unbearable and the exhibits confusing. This resulted in a media backlash, though it is claimed that visitor feedback was generally positive (even if the total number of visitors was half what was originally hoped).

After closing at the end of 2000, the contents of The Dome were auctioned off³, and the facility sat idle other than for occasional special events.

Approaching The Dome on Millennium Way

A development company purchased the site and sold naming rights to O2 in 2005. The interior was gutted and two years construction saw the creation of a fully enclosed entertainment ‘district’, dominated by a 20,000+ seat arena⁴, but also featuring cinemas, clubs, restaurants and exhibition spaces.

The O2 Arena has presented many of the world’s best known musical acts as well as sporting events and other spectacles. Prince played 21 shows shortly after the arena opened, and before his death earlier this year, Michael Jackson had scheduled (and sold out) 50 shows over 9 months.

The Dome from the north bank of the River Thames.

The Arena will host several events during the 2012 Olympics, though it will be renamed the North Greenwich Arena due to licensing and sponsorship restrictions.

Thanks to last week’s launch of Google Street View in Canada, our Canadian correspondent Ian has been able to prepare a grand tour of Canada’s Railway Hotels, in 2 parts.

Continuing our journey from east to west, looking at Canada’s grand railway hotels, we start in Toronto and the Royal York Hotel.

The largest Fairmount hotel in Canada, the Royal York is directly across the street from Union Station, still the departure point for trains which head across the country to Vancouver¹.

When it opened in 1929 the hotel was the tallest building in the British Empire, and it is typically where members of the Royal Family stay when visiting the city.

Hopping across the still-lacking-in-Street-View-imagery provinces, we head to Alberta and the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, located right next to the Calgary Tower.

Opened by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1914, the Palliser is now home to the CPR Pavilion, an exhibition showing the historical links between hotel and railway, including some vintage train cars². Once the tallest building in the city, the hotel is now dwarfed by skyscrapers that have sprung up in this oil-rich city.

Following the Street View car west we get to the Rocky Mountains, and two hotels that can perhaps be considered the grandest of the grand hotels. CPR President William Van Horne declared “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists”, and those tourists still flock to these hotels in huge numbers every year.

The Banff Springs Hotel opened in 1888 and was rebuilt 40 years later after a fire, though it took another 40 years after that for it to be made suitable for winter use.

The Banff Springs takes its name from the natural hot springs which rise in another part of the town – the hotel’s current spa is only ‘reminiscent’ of the natural springs!

Named a National Historic Site in 1992 (and located in the UNESCO World Heritage Banff National Park), the hotel is now a major ‘resort’ with a world-renowned golf course, huge conference centre, on-site staff housing and multiple accommodation wings for guests.

About 60km to the north-west is Chateau Lake Louise, which has also developed into resort status.

At the edge of a stunning glacier-blue lake, surrounded by soaring mountain peaks – this has to be one of the most scenic hotel locations in the world³, though it is amusing to see trail-ragged hikers wandering through the opulent surroundings after a long day’s walk. And despite its size, this hotel did not open year-round until the 1970s. Winter activities now include skiing and skating on the lake, as well as horse-drawn sleigh rides.

Finally to Vancouver, end (or beginning, depending on your direction of travel) of the cross-country train journey, and the Hotel Vancouver.

A joint construction by Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, the hotel is a short distance from the current VIA Rail station. It opened in 1939 with a visit from the King and Queen.

Similar to the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, the Hotel Vancouver housed the local CBC studios for a number of years.

We hope to conclude this series with the hotels in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Victoria – when Street View makes it to those cities.

Thanks to this week’s launch of Google Street View in Canada, our Canadian correspondent Ian has been able to prepare a grand tour of Canada’s Railway Hotels, in 2 parts.

It is often said that Canada was built on the railroad, with expansion of the train tracks from east to west ensuring that the population – particularly new immigrants – spread across the country. A network of grand railway hotels was created to encourage wealthy tourists to take the train. With the arrival of Google Street View in Canada, we’ll take a look at these hotels, starting with Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.

Opened in 1893, the hotel’s history is apparent the moment you step into the ornate wood-panelled lobby, while the exterior is typical of the style of hotels built by the Canadian Pacific Company, with soaring turrets and towers.

Its position atop a rock outcropping gives stunning views across the St Lawrence river from many of the rooms and makes it the dominating feature of the city’s skyline – see the view from the Old Town about 60m below.

The Chateau is now owned by the Fairmount hotel chain, as are most of the other grand hotels, including the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal.

The last railway hotel to be constructed (in 1958) before air travel became the preferred form of mass transit, it has a rather more modern architectural style. It is located directly above Montreal’s Central Station and is the largest hotel in Quebec with 1037 rooms.

This hotel is perhaps most famous as the location of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 Bed-In. They took up residence in room 1742 for a week, receiving the world’s media and many celebrities and other guests. The bed-in culminated with the recording of Give Peace a Chance.

The Queen Elizabeth was preceded in Montreal by two other – externally more elegant – hotels, both of which have now been converted for business or educational use: the Windsor Hotel and Place Viger. The Windsor Hotel was the first of the grand railway hotels, opening in 1878; it closed 103 years later. Place Viger opened 20 years later but closed in the economic depression of the 1930s.

In Ottawa the Chateau Laurier stands beside the Rideau Canal, just a few meters from Parliament Hill.

Originally located across the street from the train station¹, the hotel was commissioned by Charles Hays, chairman of the Grand Trunk Railway. Unfortunately Hays chose a ship called the Titanic to make the journey to the hotel’s opening celebration, which was subsequently delayed by a couple of months. Hays may have made the journey anyway, as a number of guests have reported seeing his ghost wandering the hallways!

Being in the nation’s capital, the hotel routinely plays host to visiting heads of state and other dignitaries. For 80 years it was also the home of the local CBC studios, while portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh had a studio and apartment in the hotel.

We’ll cover the rest of the country in part two of this post.

Thanks to Denis Gravel, Stephen Salomons and Dave.

It’s Island Week 4 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.

The last remaining fragments of the formerly immense French Empire in North America are the islands which make up the Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, located 25km off the coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland.

Of the eight islands which make up the archipelago, only Saint Pierre and Miquelon-Langlade are inhabited today, though history traces populations back to the early 16th century, and possibly even earlier. Control of the islands switched between England and France numerous times before France took permanent ownership in 1815.

Saint Pierre houses the capital (of the same name) of the collectivity, and the bulk of the population – about 5,500 people. Five much smaller islands off the north and east coasts are also part of the territory.

The waterfront of Saint Pierre is dominated by the Customs House and General Charles de Gaulle Square where the Tricolor is raised on Bastille Day.

Miquelon-Langlade comprises two formerly separate islands now joined by a 12km long sandspit called La Dune, which local lore explains was built up by the 500 ships which wrecked in the area.

Despite their larger size, these islands are home to less than 700 permanent residents on Miquelon. The last remaining Langlade resident passed away a couple of years ago, though many islanders do keep summer homes here.

The sandbar also protects Grand Barachois – a large lagoon on Miquelon which supports a colony of seals and other wildlife.

The collectivity has been a sore point for Canada on occasion. During World War II, Canada contemplated invading the islands when they were suspected of assisting German submarines. More recently a conflict over fishing rights had to be resolved by the International Court of Arbitration, which awarded France territory surrounding the islands in addition to 19km wide corridor stretching 370km to the south.

To help preserve fishing as a traditional way of life, the government built Les Salines – cabins where fishermen keep their boats and process their catches.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is renowned as the only place in North America where Euros are legal tender¹, and for the quality of the baguettes, for which French flour is specially imported!

The islands have a couple of notable historical moments: In 1889 a convicted murderer became the only person ever to be executed by guillotine in North America. And from 1920 to 1933, they experienced a significant period of economic prosperity caused by alcohol smuggling during Prohibition in the US.

Thanks to Rob Shostak, Thomas Paul and Josh Simons.