The first Street View images outside America are now available - Street View has come to France!

Added in celebration of the upcoming Tour de France, the street view images are mostly restricted to the race route (rather than allowing you to explore whole cities).

However, there is lots to see, including the most classic of sights: The Eiffel tower¹.

Street View cars have been spotted all over Europe, so other countries are no doubt on the way.

In the meantime, let us know what you find in France and, if you speak French, make sure you’re subscribed to Google Sightseeing Français.

Thanks: Google Maps Mania

As the summer wedding season gets into full swing, even Google is muscling in on the action, and has managed to capture a rather charming shot of the newlyweds - probably much to the disappointment of the photographer who wanted the exclusive!

In my opinion, a spectacular photo opportunity, as this is Columbus Circle in New York City, a famous landmark which is surrounded by amazing skyscrapers - not least the Trump International Hotel and Tower behind the party.

Along with the 44 story luxury hotel, Columbus Circle features the New York home of CNN as well as The Time Warner Centre, two striking glass towers which each top out at 229m. This is also home to a record-breakingly expensive penthouse that was sold in 2003 for $54.7 million.

Thanks to the new imagery which allows for nearly 360 degree views, you can see all of New York’s skyscrapers instead of the first 5 floors of them, so get hunting and tell us!

Find out more about the history of Columbus Circle at Wikipedia, as well as more on The Time Warner Centre and Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Thanks: streetviewfun

The 12th tallest member of the World Federation of Great Towers, Auckland’s Sky Tower is 328 metres tall (from ground level to the top of the mast), which makes it the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere¹.

Friend of Google Sightseeing, Nev, is currently doing a 29000 mile trip around the planet, and yesterday (or today, or possibly tomorrow depending on your time zone) decided to leap off this very tower. Twice.

He was able to achieve this death-defying feat thanks to a “fan descender free fall system” that controlled his descent over 192 metres! Here’s a picture of someone engaging in this utterly ridiculous pastime.

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit familiar, then you may have read our 2005 post on the Macau Sky Tower, which was commissioned by billionaire Stanley Ho Hung-Sun after he saw the Auckland Sky Tower, and decided he wanted one for himself. A little bit taller, naturally.

You can read more about the Auckland Sky Tower at Wikipedia, or entertain yourself with posts about other members of the World Federation of Great Towers that we’ve featured in the past.

Last Sunday saw the swearing in of Boris Johnson, conservative MP for Henley (and renowned committer of gaffes), as the new Mayor of London. This means that, not only will he have power over nearly everything in Greater London, he will also take up office in London’s rather spectacular City Hall.

Opened in 2002, the glass clad building contains a 500 metre helical walkway, which eventually reaches ‘London’s Living Room’, a large space 10 floors up which affords rather spectacular views over the River Thames, and which also played host to Boris’ acceptance speech at the weekend (and unsurprising trip-up beforehand!).

Perhaps the new Mayor will be more accepting of the Norman Foster design than Ken Livingstone, who famously likened the building to a ‘glass testicle’. Boris however is said to refer to it as ‘The Onion’ - which fits, since the nearby ‘Gherkin’ is another work by Foster and Partners.¹

Here’s a link to the Live Maps Bird’s Eye view of London City Hall which really demonstrates the tower’s bizarre shape, or you can see lots of pictures and read more about it at GreatBuildings and wikipedia. Thanks to Krusader.

Here in the city of Djenné, Mali stands the Great Mosque of Djenné, which is the largest mud brick building in the world.

The first mosque was built on this site in the 13th century, but was later demolished, so the current structure dates from 1907. It was built using bricks of sun-baked mud, with mud for mortar, and is coated in a plaster mix which is basically just mud.

Using nothing but mud-derivatives doesn’t make for a very sound structure, so the building requires frequent repairs. To aid this process bundles of palm branches have been added into the walls to support the structure and act as a sort of scaffolding climbing wall for the repair work.

More info about the Great Mosque at Wikipedia and pictures on Flickr.

Thanks to Sven van Heel.

As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 - see you all next year!

Built on the site of the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival, the Glasgow Science Centre is a purpose-built facility featuring three floors dedicated to hands-on science in action. Taking the form of a huge, gleaming, titanium crescent overlooking the Clyde, the building is also home to the best-equipped planetarium in the UK.

As if that wasn’t enough, just to the south we can see the silver dome of Scotland’s only IMAX cinema¹, which has a screen larger than a 5-a-side football pitch, and a 12,000-watt digital sound system.

Most impressive of all from up here however, is the 127 metre-tall Glasgow Tower. This is the tallest floored building in Scotland, and the tallest building in the world which can rotate through a full 360 degrees!

Technically the tower is actually an aerofoil (like an aeroplane wing stood on one end), which is rotated into the wind by computers – allowing it to be exceptionally slim for its height. Impressive stuff, and I hear the views are not bad too.

Thanks to Martin Deutsch. More about the Glasgow Science Centre, the Glasgow Tower and the IMAX film format at, you guessed it, Wikipedia.

Today marks the launch of London’s new Channel Tunnel¹ rail link, High Speed 1 - which from now on terminates here at the “Cathedral of the railways”, St Pancras railway station.

The station actually comprises two of the most celebrated structures of the Victorian era. In our first thumnbail we can see the clock tower of St Pancras Chambers (formerly the Midland Grand Hotel), which remains one of the most impressive examples of Victorian gothic architecture anywhere in Britain.

The Midland Grand Hotel closed in 1935, and the building was used as offices until the 60s, when only a public campaign saved it from being knocked down. The building became vacant in the 1980s², and since 2005 it’s been under renovation, and will soon once again be a hotel.

The Barlow Trainshed, designed by William Henry Barlow and completed in 1868, was the largest single-span structure built up to that time. The single span roof is 74 metres across, and was actually employed purely to make maximum use of the space without obstructions.

The trainshed has received a full renovation in preparation for its new role as the London terminus of High Speed 1, and we can see the work in progress in Google’s images.

Here’s more about St Pancras at Wikipedia. Thanks to Radio 2.