Above is Estadio Lluís Sitjar in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Built in 1945, for over half a century the 18,000 seat stadium was the home of football club RCD Mallorca. The stadium has sat unused since 2007, but the word ‘Mallorca‘ can still be plainly seen spelled out in the seats. The field of play, however, is already in a sad state.

On another populous Spanish island, Gran Canaria, lies Estadio Insular, which was the home of UD Las Palmas. Built in the same year as Lluís Sitjar, the 21,000 seater was abandoned four years earlier. Grass and trees are already rooting themselves in the stands, and the walls are covered in graffiti.

Stade des Charmilles in Geneva was the site of five FIFA World Cup games in 1954. Much of the facility was dismantled in 2002 and the field is completely barren, but the grandstands remain in place. In the rival city of Zurich, the demolished Hardturm also hosted World Cup games. Satellite imagery shows the shells of the grandstand are still intact, and Street View shows the rubble surrounding it.

In Germany, Gelsenkirchen’s Parkstadion was the home of the Bundesliga’s Schalke 04 from 1973 to 2001. Since then, about one-half of the seating has been removed, but the rest remains.

The largest abandoned stadium seen on Google Maps is the Estadio Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil. Originally built to a capacity of 66,080, the stadium was expanded to a monstrous 110,000 seats in 1971. Tragedy struck Fonte Nova in 2007, when an upper terrace collapsed during a Third Division championship final, killing seven spectators and injuring forty. The stadium was immediately closed. Since this imagery was captured, Fonte Nova has been demolished.

At one point the largest arena in the Czech Republic, Brno’s Stadion Za Lužánkami has sat in state for the past decade. Not only is the old playing field easy to make out, but even the goalposts are still standing. Around the edges, though, trees up to 3 metres high have sprouted in the bleachers.

Not all abandoned stadiums are left to rot. The Dell, the former home of English side Southampton, was redeveloped as a housing estate after its 2001 closure. Not only does the estate retain the shape of the original stadium, but all of the apartment blocks are named for famous Saints players.

Naturally, there aren’t only modern abandoned arenas to be found on Google Maps. The Plaza de Toros in Cartagena, Spain has been abandoned for nearly a century. Built on top of an ancient Roman arena, the location is set to be the home of a new Roman museum. Over in Merida, this ancient amphitheatre dates all the way back to 25 BC. The gladiator pit is exposed in the middle of the arena.

We end the first part of our tour in South Africa, where in Cape Town, Greenpoint Stadium was torn down to make way for the neighbouring Cape Town Stadium in advance of the 2010 World Cup¹. Here we see demolition crews working to dismantle the arena. The north grandstand, however, remains standing.

Read part two of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of the United States.

Locations: Brazil, Czech Republic, England, Germany, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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The new Olympic Stadium was completed earlier this year and has a capacity of around 80,000 spectators.

After the Olympics and Paralympics are over it will be converted to a football stadium for use by West Ham United who won the right to use it after a controversial court battle with other clubs. The track and field facilities will be retained and the stadium will host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The Olympic Zone will be the focal point of the Games and features a number of other new facilities including the Aquatics Centre, the velopark (which includes the velodrome and outdoor road and BMX circuits) and the basketball arena.

While it’s hard to find good Street View images, the elevated section of the A12 gives us a glimpse of the construction site. It reveals the swooping shape of the velodrome and the ridged roof of the basketball arena.

We also get a very distant view of the stadium and Aquatics Centre.

The Zone also includes a handball arena and two hockey stadiums in this area which is shown full of construction materials. A former greyhound racing facility may serve as the media centre for the Games.

The eastern side of the development features the Athletes’ Village – a number of accommodation buildings for the 10,000-plus athletes and their team officials. After the Games they will be taken over by the city of Stratford which is being extensively redeveloped.

Further south, the ‘River Zone’ will feature four venues along the Thames, including the O2 Arena¹, which will be used for gymnastics. The Excel Arena will house competition in seven sports including boxing, table tennis and judo. The historic Royal park in Greenwich will host all equestrian events while all shooting events will take place the Royal Artillery Barracks².

While a number of other pre-existing venues scattered across London will be used for various sports, in some cases the Games organisers are creating venues in non-traditional but iconic locations. For example, a temporary 15,000 seat beach volleyball stadium will be built in Horseguards Parade which normally plays host to the Trooping of the Colour.

The wide green expanse of Lord’s Cricket Ground will be converted to an archery venue with seating for close to 7,000 spectators.

There are several venues outside the city as well, including the Lee Valley White Water Centre which we see here under construction prior to its opening for canoe/kayak events a year ago.

For the past couple of Olympics, Google has released brand-new satellite and Street View imagery shortly before the Games, so we’ll plan to do a more detailed post next summer. If they can do Street View on the slopes at Whistler, I hope the next step forward is to strap a camera to a kayak and send it down the whitewater course!

Read more about the 2012 Olympic venues at Wikipedia and at the London 2012 site.

Locations: England / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views, Structures

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Windsor

The English Windsor is about 40km west of London. Its Castle, shown above, is justly famous – built by William the Conqueror and still used regularly by the royal family, it is both the largest inhabited castle in the world, and the palace which has been occupied for the longest period of time. We visited it back in 2006.

It bears little resemblance to Windsor, Ontario, which is most often in the news for its dwindling number of car manufacturing plants, and its increasing number of casinos designed to draw American tourists across the border from Detroit.

Cornwall

Cornwall, in England’s far south-west, is a holiday-makers paradise, with pristine beaches, soaring cliffs and picturesque villages, and is of course home to Land’s End.

It would be hard to find any similarities with Cornwall, Ontario, which has a reputation as a rough-edged town polluted by industrial waste and popular with those wanting to smuggle cigarettes across the nearby US border.

One advantage of the toxic waste dumps is that they can apparently serve as ski hills in the winter!

Waterloo

Waterloo is a municipality in Belgium where the famous Battle of Waterloo saw Napoleon’s French army defeated in 1815. A large monument marks the battleground.

The only battle of note in Waterloo, Ontario, is the one for control of the smart-phone market, with Blackberry-manufacturer RIM being based here.

Athens

The Greek capital of Athens is often called ‘the cradle of Western civilisation’ It is home to countless historic buildings and treasures, and was the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

It bears little resemblance to Athens, Ontario, which is a small farming town of 3,000 people, seemingly most famous for its corn festival held every summer. It also has a number of pleasant murals of rural life.

Tweed

The River Tweed is a bucolic waterway in the Scottish borders region. It attracts anglers from all over the world for its renowned salmon fishing.

Tweed, Ontario, is mainly noted for its amusingly-decorated fire hydrants. It was also rumoured to be a hiding place for Elvis by those who believe his death was faked, although – surprisingly – no real evidence of this has ever surfaced.

Khartum

Khartoum is the bustling capital of Sudan, with a turbulent and often lawless history on the banks of the Nile. Recent development has been spurred by income from the country’s oil wells.

It could in no way be confused with Khartum, Ontario, which is, well … not much really. If anything it’s a ghost town. It is identified on the map and there are couple of roadside signs with the town’s name, but there’s nothing between the two signs that could really define it as a community. How it got the name, we have no idea!

If you have a favourite namesake, send it to us through our submission form and it might be included in a future post!

Locations: England, Greece, Ontario, Scotland, Sudan / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Weirdness

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Reader Dave Schubert identifies the plane as being in an engine test stand. According to Google Earth’s historical imagery feature this image was taken on the 27th of June 2010, which is interesting as Concorde was retired in 2003 – so it’s perhaps a little strange that they would be testing the engines.

Next, to Canada’s busiest airport, Toronto Pearson. However, we’re looking at a very American icon – the Blue Angels aerobatic team.

More formally known as the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, these planes were spotted by Kevin Hodgson. The six F/A-18 Hornets are seen parked near to a seventh plane, a two-seater F/A-18B that can be used as a backup plane if necessary. We can also see the C-130T Hercules nicknamed Fat Albert, which carries support personnel, spare parts and technical equipment.

You can read more about the Blue Angels at their official site, and at Wikipedia.

Given the recent situation in Libya, it may be a good thing that eight C-130 Hercules that were ordered by the Gaddafi regime are stuck in the southern US state of Georgia.

The desert-camouflaged planes were ordered and built at this Lockheed plant at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in the early 1970s. However before they could be delivered, the US imposed sanctions on Libya.

Because they are technically the property of the Libyan government, the planes cannot be moved, so they sit on flat tires, surrounded by weeds in the distant reaches of the base. Thanks to Cafe de Unie, SecretAgent Man and Jonathan Peterson for sending this one in.

Unused planes can be a problem for any airport, though at Hot Springs in Arkansas they park them a little more neatly and efficiently than they do at Manas Airport in Kyrgyzstan or Wilson Airport in Kenya. Thanks to ‘Me’, nga and Bryan Johnson for these.

Moving on to crashed planes (nervous flyers should probably stop reading at this point!), we start with a couple of real downed planes. This Curtis C-46F Commando crashed in November 1979, shortly after taking off from Churchill in northern Canada.

It was reported to us by Lindsay Marshall, and airliners.net has some good pictures. Apparently the inside has been setup with a picnic table, and is a local tourist attraction.

Just a few months ago, two people unfortunately lost their lives when their small plane crashed into Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin. New satellite imagery just happened to capture a crane recovering the wreckage. Thanks to milwhcky for reporting this one via Virtual Globetrotting.

Hollywood is fond of creating its own plane crashes, and the set from 2005′s War of the Worlds is now part of Universal Studio’s tour, as shown in this YouTube video. Thanks to Anthony Moore for the suggestion.

The studio spent $2million to bring an unused 747 to the lot, carefully broke it apart and then built the houses affected by the crash in the movie. Google’s 45-degree imagery allows us to see the set from different perspectives, including engines lying next to a house, seats in the ripped apart cabin, and the charred tail section.

Another apparently horrific plane crash was spotted by Bryan Johnson at the former Alameda Naval Air Station near San Francisco.

Some of the 45-degree imagery was apparently taken on a different day, and reveals crowds of people and emergency vehicles.

However, we can also see lots of technical equipment, including a camera crane, so it’s clear that this isn’t a real crash, and Geek.com reveals that it is, in fact, a set for the TV show Trauma.

We had previously featured Alameda for its role in a Matrix film, though personally I’m hoping that someday we’ll see images of the Mythbusters team who film regularly at this location.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this post. Please use the suggestion form if you know if interesting locations that you think we should feature.

Locations: Arkansas, California, England, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Manitoba, Ontario / Categories: Abandoned, Aircraft, Movie Locations, Shadows

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Even from other angles, which reveal its true shape, the Wrekin still seems to be an aberration in the landscape: it emerges abruptly from the surrounding plain, as if it had erupted from the earth.

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Sadly, geologists tell us that the Wrekin is not a real volcano, although it was formed from volcanic rock hundreds of millions of years ago. Still, the view from the summit is spectacular, and you don’t even need to leave your sofa to see it, since the Street View cameras have made it to the top:

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As an isolated peak, the Wrekin was a perfect vantage point for the Cornovii, an Iron Age tribe who built a hillfort on its summit. The fort was ultimately destroyed by the Romans, who had built the city of Viroconium close to the hill. The Roman city’s ruins can still be seen today, and it is easy to imagine how threatening the Wrekin must have looked to the soldiers garrisoned there (A.E. Housman evoked that idea beautifully in his poem A Shropshire Lad).

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The Wrekin’s claim to volcanohood may be unfounded, but Salopian folklore provides a better explanation for its peculiar nature. Legend tells that a giant once stomped toward Shrewsbury, carrying a mound of earth on his spade with which he intended to destroy the city. Meeting a cobbler, who was carrying a sack of shoes for repair, the giant asked how far it was to Shrewsbury. The wily cobbler opened his sack and said “So far away that I’ve worn out all these shoes since I left”. Demoralised, the giant gave up and dumped the earth upon the ground … thus forming the Wrekin. The giant is honoured by an enormous fibreglass statue in Telford Town Park. You can glimpse him through these trees…

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However it got there, the Wrekin has become a symbol of the local area, and it was once traditional at Salopian gatherings to offer a toast to “all friends round the Wrekin”!

Locations: England / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Volcanoes

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Ye Olde Google Maps

Before there was Google Maps, there was the wonderfully detailed Agas Map of 1561¹, and before there was Street View, there was Wenceslas Hollar’s incredible panoramic masterpiece Long View of London (1647), which you can view a small section of, or you can download the entire gigantic image from this page (be warned, it’s 73MB!)²

Detail of the Globe theatre from Long View of London by Wenceslas Hollar.

While many of the streets recorded in these drawings survive today, the buildings themselves are almost all gone, thanks to the Great Fire of London of 1666. But despite the ravages of “devouring time”, a few places remain that Shakespeare would have seen with his own eyes. In this post, I’ll ignore the large-scale survivors such as the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, and focus instead on some hidden gems.

The Globe Theatre

Tourists are familiar with the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the South Bank, but less obvious are the foundations of the original building, which archaeologists discovered underneath a car park a couple of hundred yards up the road. The remains have since been reburied, but you can see a curved line that marks the location of the theatre’s round walls.

So this is where Hamlet, Julius Caesar and King Lear premiered. Listen: can you almost hear the applause? No? Me neither. But this is the spot.

St Helen’s Bishopsgate

Shakespeare lived in the parish of St Helen’s Bishopsgate during the 1590s and would have known its church well. The Church of St Helen’s has survived the Great Fire, the Blitz, and even an IRA bomb. And here’s a surprise: in the Street View window below, turn to the right, and you’ll find that the church is almost next door to that futuristic London landmark, the Gherkin.

St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell

This archway is St. John’s Gate, part of the Priory of St. John. Shakespeare probably came here many times, because in his day it was occupied by the Master of the Revels, a court official who arranged performances for the monarch and censored play manuscripts. Today it belongs to the Museum of the Order of St. John.

London Stone

Do you see the little barred enclosure set into the bottom of this abandoned retail building?

If you could peer through the bars you’d see a lump of rough-hewn rock with some grooves on top. This is the enigmatic London Stone. No-one is certain of its age or its original purpose, but it has been kept on display for centuries; legend warns that London will be destroyed if the stone is not kept safe. Shakespeare mentions it in Henry VI, Part 2; in his day it was stored in a similar case on a different part of the street. It may soon be moved to the Museum of London.

Fragments of London Wall

Today, the wall that once circled London is almost completely gone, but a few fragments remain to conjure the looming mass that Shakespeare would have seen.

Southwark Cathedral

Finally, Southwark Cathedral would have been a local place of worship for actors at the Globe Theatre; Shakespeare’s brother Edmund and two of his fellow playwrights are buried here. Modern additions have been built onto the cathedral, but its steeple still looks the same as it did in Shakespeare’s time.

So we’ve come full circle, for it was atop that very steeple that Wenceslas Hollar sketched his Long View of London, recording this now vanished world for posterity.

Locations: England / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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While the Street View car drove both sides of the Saint John River, it unfortunately did not take the small side road which crosses the 391m Hartland Bridge. It was originally built in 1901, though it has suffered damage from ice and fire at various times. You can learn more at the town’s website.

The longest covered bridge in the United States is the Smolen-Gulf Bridge in Ohio, which measures 187m. While covered bridges are generally perceived as historical icons, this structure was only built in 2008, at a cost of almost $8million.¹

This time we do get a good look at the interior of the bridge.

There are many theories about why covered bridges became popular in North America starting in the 19th century. Some believe that they prevented herds of animals from being disturbed by the sight of rushing water or that they protected travellers during inclement weather (which surely wouldn’t be any worse over a river than the rest of the road?). However, the more likely explanation is that covering a bridge structure quite significantly extended the life of the wooded decking.

Because not every bridge can be the overall longest, tourist officials come up with a variety of other superlatives to try to draw attention to their local landmarks. For example, the 71m long bridge in Blenheim, New York, which is the world’s longest single-span covered bridge. It’s also notable for being one of only a few ‘double-barelled’ bridges – having a separate laneway for each direction of traffic.

Covered bridges are also found in many European countries, and they are often much older than those found in North America. The oldest is claimed to be the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) in Lucerne, Switzerland, which was first built in 1333. Street View gets a very picturesque look at it from a nearby road bridge.

This isn’t entirely the original structure, much of which – including 17th century paintings which adorned the interior – was destroyed in a fire in 1993. The brick tower at the mid-way point has been used by the city for many purposes – its thick walls and defensible position making it ideal as a treasury and watchtower, though it was also a prison at some point in its history.

Additional entrants for ‘most picturesque’ covered bridge are the town of Bassano Del Grappa in Italy, and Chateau Chenonceau in France, which was one of the chateaux recently visited by the Street View trike.

Not all covered bridges cross waterways. In Oxford the Bridge of Sighs² connects two buildings in the famous university.

Returning to the US, the state of Pennsylvania claims the largest collection of covered bridges, having more than 200! Many of these are found on streets creatively called Covered Bridge Road (or Lane, or Avenue, etc). One example is the Dreibelbis bridge. With such a large number of similar addresses, you have to wonder if people’s mail is prone to going astray.

Many covered bridges around the US are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is encouraging that efforts are made to preserve them even when they are replaced by more modern road bridges. The McDermott Bridge in New Hampshire is one such example.

Covered bridges enjoyed a period of fame with the success of the book Bridges of Madison County, and the film of the same name. There are six bridges in Madison County, Iowa, though only one of them is visible on (a rather hazy) Street View, the Imes Bridge.

The satellite images allow us to see Cedar Bridge and Holliwell Bridge, both of which were used as filming locations for the movie.

As with so many of these historic wooden bridges, the original 1883 Cedar Bridge was destroyed by fire, though it has been rebuilt to the same design.

There are also many covered bridges in Asia, though we have yet to find any good images on Google maps. Please link to them in the comments if you know of any.

We’d also love to hear of your own personal favourite covered bridge, as there are many hundreds that we weren’t able to include in this post!

Locations: England, France, Iowa, Italy, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Switzerland / Categories: Bridges, Movie Locations, Street Views

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The walls are riddled with cracks, as though the building had been rocked by a huge earthquake. Just one of several Ripley’s attractions in this tourist-destination city, it is a relatively recent building. The original museum here was destroyed by a real disaster in the form of a fire in 1992.

Tourist towns are a natural fit for Ripley’s bizarre collections which include genetically mutated animals (two headed creatures are a favourite) and relics from infamous events. In Niagara Falls, Ontario, visitors who tire of watching water flow over a cliff can walk up Clifton Hill where they’ll find a prostrate version of the Empire State Building, complete with King Kong.

The details are worth noting, including the person hanging out of a window and the helicopter on the ‘top’ of the building.

Meanwhile Blackpool’s beachfront museum has a veritable trove of exterior oddities, including Jeep embedded in the entranceway with an explorer climbing a rope to escape and a pair of legs sticking out of the wall. On the roof there’s a dinosaur wearing a large clock – maybe he thinks he’s Flavor Flav?

It’s a little hard to make out on the satellite view, but the Odditorium in Thailand’s resort town Pattaya has a plane crashed into its walls. Something similar also happened at the Ripley’s in the small town of Wisconsin Dells.

Another transportation-themed museum is found in Panama City Beach, Florida, where an ocean liner has ‘washed up’ several hundred metres from the shore.

The Street View car even pulled into the parking lot for a visit – giving us a close up look at the lifeboat!

In Branson, Missouri, there is another ‘earthquake-ravaged‘ building, while in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the museum looks as though it has been damaged by the many storms that hit this hurricane-prone region.

Finally, the Ripley’s museum in Guadalajara, Mexico, is not at all architecturally unusual, but Street View does allow us to see an exhibit – a silver Rolls Royce, which I believe (if Google Translate is correct) was once the property of La Doña Maria Félix, a notable Mexican actress.

You can learn more at Wikipedia, or Ripley’s official website.

Locations: England, Florida, Mexico, Missouri, Ontario, Tennessee, Thailand, Wisconsin / Categories: Buildings, Street Views, Weirdness

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We’re very glad to still be here, and would like to thank our writers past and present for all their hard work over the years, and of course all of you who have been reading the site, contributing sights and leaving comments.

We’re always interested in what our readers think of the site, so we’d like to extend this opportunity for you to send us any feedback on how you’d like us to improve the site over the coming year, either as a comment here or via our feedback form.

Thanks again for reading, we can’t wait to see where the next six years take us!

Locations: England, Scotland / Categories: Site News

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Each year from April to August, around 60-80 designs are discovered in fields across England, especially in the county of Wiltshire. Occasionally though the patterns are found in adjoining counties, as is the case with the Jellyfish, which was in Oxfordshire.

One reason for the concentration of crop circle activity in Wiltshire may be that it is swimming in prehistoric artefacts, most famously Stonehenge, but also the larger and older Neolithic henge of Avebury, as well as Silbury Hill, which is the largest artificial mound in Europe.

Of course it probably isn’t a coincidence that Wiltshire is the neighbouring county of Hampshire, which is where Doug Bower and Dave Chorley were from. They were the two men who in 1991 famously announced that “alien” crop circles were all a hoax, and that they alone had been personally responsible for the vast majority of the hundreds of crop circles that had appeared since they were first seen in Wiltshire in 1978.

However, every year since the hoax was revealed, England’s “crop circles” have become increasingly more complex, and the 2010 crop season was a bumper one, with many adventurous designs created. Due to their ephemeral nature, few are ever recorded on Google Maps and Earth at the peak of their existence, but their sheer quantity ensures that zooming out from Avebury even very slightly reveals the remains of two pieces of crop art within just a few hundred metres.

Examining the Oxfordshire Jellyfish in closer detail reveals that it was made up of a number of more “traditional” crop-circles – whereby the plants are meticulously flattened using simple tools – but the artists and exact techniques employed remain unknown!

Actually, some like to pretend they’re unknown, but when you run a website advertising your crop-art-creation skills for hire to the world’s biggest brands, it’s really not that hard to work out who might be behind it all. This appearance on QI didn’t do much to keep the whole thing shrouded in mystery either.

Today’s professional circlemakers argue that the designs themselves cause very little damage to the crops, and that a savvy farmer could recoup the cost of any damage by charging tourists for access to the site. It’s also unlikely that the photographers, publicans or journalists who benefit from the annual attention are going to be calling for an end to the tradition any time soon.

Expect to see the papers reporting the first crop circle appearances of 2011 any day now.

Locations: England / Categories: Crop Circles, Monuments

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