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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Rude messages

Not everything can make the cut obviously, but things like this painting of a naked woman on top of this building near Phoenix, AZ are certainly eye-catching. Thanks to GSS reader prmckinney for sending it in.

Henry sent us a friendly message in New Zealand that, well, gets directly to the point.

Or you could be like this guy near Austin, Texas who loves to express his satisfaction with American president Barack Obama! Make sure you notice the detail of the middle finger! Thanks to Chris S.

Lookalikes

At times just the strange artefacts of Google Maps itself are amusing! Take a look at this rather unfortunately shaped road near the Newcastle FC stadium sent to us by Chris. On the more natural side, Pamela sent us this lake in Alberta, Canada that looks, well, pretty much exactly like a rat.

Signposts for the sky

Rooftops can be an easy target for “on-the-fly” messaging. Marc sent us a link to a huge “Amazing Race” finish line painting on the final approach path to LAX. The wildly popular American reality show has used Los Angeles as the finish line before, but it does seem odd that they actually put a channel and time on it. Maybe it’s just a huge billboard instead?

Quetzal sent us the letter Z carved into the desert next to a highway in Coahuila, México, which is apparently the sign of a notorious Mexican Drug Cartel. On a lighter note, Dawn sent us a link to this extravagant field maze that takes the shape of a steam locomotive!

Mystery circles

Sometimes the most interesting things we see on the ground however are circles. You have the obvious crop circles around the world, but then there are perhaps stranger things out there. For example, any ideas what this little circle in the desert sent to us by Mastboy could be?

Or perhaps this circle off the coast of the United Kingdom? Maybe it could be a beacon of some kind? Thanks to scotty for the link!

In a more mysterious entry, a series of strange circular features have been sent to us from deep in the forests of Maharashtra in India. They’re remote, they’re large, and no one seems to really know where they came from!

The four circles appear to be man-made due to the perfect circular shape and similar size, but no obvious pattern or purpose can be seen. One of the most popular theories are the circles are some sort of ancient water reservoirs, but one could argue how much water needs to be collected in the middle of a monsoon-ridden country!

Some more imaginative people think that ancient aliens visited and made the circles, but they aren’t really a patch on traditional crop circles though.

Even the local villagers in Kumbhale aren’t sure where the circles came from, even though one of them is practically on their doorstep.

Another theory suggests that the circles are “strikingly” similar to meteorite impacts, but the rims of these circles do not appear to share the same crowning effect that occurs near other true craters – and there haven’t been any meteorite fragments found here (although this could perhaps be due to erosion from the monsoons we mentioned).

For some discussion on the circles, including ground level photos, check out this link. What do you think they are? Thanks to Sandesh for sending in this intriguing suggestion.

Locations: Alberta, Arizona, California, India, Mexico, Morocco, New Jersey, New Zealand, Texas, United Kingdom / Categories: Crop Circles, Large Type, Movie Locations, Stadiums and Sport, Weirdness

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5. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

Starting out at number 5, we find ourselves in the never-ending sun of Los Angeles, California. Between January and May 2011, the Los Angeles International Airport served an astonishing 24,230,832 passengers, all while competing with four other airports in the Los Angeles area. LAX is designed so that each terminal’s arrival gate feeds directly to the exit, and its eastbound approach over the Pacific Ocean is known for terrifying new flyers!

4. O’Hare International Airport (ORD)

Nestled west of downtown Chicago we find the fourth busiest airport in the world, O’Hare International Airport. ORD is perhaps the most intriguing airport on our list to look at from above, due to its centralised design being surrounded by six intersecting runways. From January to May of 2011, O’Hare handled 25,986,415 passengers in its busy and sometimes frantic terminals. The weather around Chicago has been known to leave its mark on O’Hare as well – in 2010 1 out of every 5 flights (21.5%) into O’Hare was delayed by more than 15 minutes.²

Like most busy airports around the world, O’Hare is expanding through its own modernisation plan. Evidence can be seen from above in the form of a new east-west runway being built at the south end of the airport.

3. London Heathrow Airport (LHR)

Ranking number three in our list, we find the busiest airport in the EU and the airport that handles more international passengers than anywhere else, London’s Heathrow Airport. In the first half of 2011, Heathrow saw 26,733,585 passengers, which is logistically impressive when you consider LHR only has 2 runways, and it’s also competing with London’s four other airports! In what is becoming a common theme, the airport’s terminals are centrally located in this mess between the runways, with the exception of an international terminal on the south end of the airfield.

What would the world’s largest international airport be without the world’s largest passenger airplane? Here’s one of the massive Airbus A380s, which we found heading out towards the runway. This plane can be configured to hold up to an amazing 853 people, but sources indicate this particular bird has somewhere between 550-650 seats onboard.

2. Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)

The Asian market is well represented on our countdown in the form of China’s Beijing Capital International Airport, ranking number two in passenger traffic with 31,080,482 flyers in the first 5 months of this year. That’s nearly 5 million more than Heathrow in the same time period! It looks like the day this satellite photo was taken however things are kind of slow, as there isn’t much traffic sitting at the gate.

We did however happen to spot this Boeing 777 mid-takeoff! Or is landing? Hmm…

1. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)

Surprised? Well you shouldn’t be! Year after year, the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta continues to dominate the various statistical categories and easily claim the title of “The World’s Busiest Airport”. It’s had the highest number of annual passengers every year since 1998, the most air traffic in 1999, 2000 and from 2005 through to today, and it even set a world record in 2007 when the airport had a mind boggling 994,346 takeoffs and landings in one year! That’s an average of nearly one takeoff and one landing every minute of every day for a solid year! In an effort to handle this unbelievable amount of traffic, the airport expanded and added a fifth runway in 2006 that literally crosses over Interstate 85 Interstate 285.

ATL has 195 gates spread across six terminals, all accessible by an underground train system. Some of these gates are squeezed extremely tightly together. Delta Airlines (which appropriately happens to be the world’s largest airline) uses Hartsfield–Jackson as its main hub airport, flying over 59% of all flights here. To avoid radio confusion the FAA officially renamed taxiway D (normally pronounced Delta everywhere else) to Taxiway Dixie.

Atlanta had 36,548,629 passengers between January and May of 2011, which is 5.5 million more than Beijing, and they’re still expanding! Google imagery shows us construction of the new terminal F, due to be opened in Spring 2012, and also the airport’s control tower, which happens to be the tallest in the United States as well!

Honourable Mentions

Amongst aviation geeks you will hear the grumblings that an airport isn’t the busiest unless it has the most planes, or the most cargo, or the most international passengers, or whatever! So to be well-rounded in our not so scientific list, here are a few honourable mentions that don’t quite have the passenger counts to make the top 5, but make up for it in other areas.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) – Ranks number 4 in traffic movement.

Denver International Airport (DEN) – Ranks number 5 in traffic movement.

Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) – Ranks number 1 in cargo traffic.

Memphis International Airport (MEM) – Ranks number 2 in cargo traffic.

Locations: Arkansas, California, China, Colorado, Georgia, Hong Kong, Illinois, Texas, United Kingdom / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Structures

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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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The fourth-largest island of Shetland, sparsely-populated Fetlar has a population of around 70 residents and is surrounded by cliffs and beaches. To get there from mainland Scotland, one has to take four separate ferries via Orkney, Shetland Mainland, and Unst before finally arriving on the west coast of the island.

Not far from the ferry is the historic Brough Lodge, built in 1820 by the Nicolson family. This abandoned castle-like building is a 19th century folly built upon an Iron Age foundation, and has been deteriorating for some time. Plans are underway to restore the remaining structures.

A walled facade joins the main house to a chapel and makes the building appear bigger than it actually is. Above the house on a small mound is this turreted tower, giving Brough Lodge its castle-like appearance.

Halfway along the island is the main settlement of Houbie, where things seems to be quite active for a place with a population of just seventy people. Fetlar’s primary school had just one pupil this past year, but this autumn the class size is set to triple!

One fascinating feature of Fetlar is that it’s divided between east and west by an ancient 4 km (2.5 mile) wall known as Funzie Girt, which may date all the way back to the 1st millennium BC.

No one knows precisely why it was built or what function it serves, although one theory suggests it may have served as a boundary dyke. The wall is best preserved on the uninhabited north side of the island, but this remnant near Houbie is well-preserved. Just across the road, however, it’s rather grown over.

Other dykes on the island have simply become gathering places for pigs and sheep to forage. In addition to dykes, old stone building foundations dating back hundreds of years can be found across Fetlar.

A popular tourist spot is this odd–looking rock wall known as the Funzie Geowall, which demonstrates the rare conglomerates of ancient oceanic crust that make up much of the island. The rocks in this wall are about 450 million years old.

At the east end of Fetlar is Funzie, where the cliffs and beaches slip into the North Sea.

You can learn more about Fetlar on its community website or at the school’s website.

Locations: Scotland / Categories: Buildings, Islands, Monuments, Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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The countries receiving updated imagery are Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Additionally, there is brand new coverage of two of Britain’s Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man, and Jersey.

Peel Castle, Isle of Man

Mont Orgueil, Jersey

Of particular interest in the United States, brand new imagery has been added throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, taking in sights such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Staples Center, and USS Midway which are now shown in stunning high-resolution.

What can you find in the new imagery? Send us your finds via our suggestion form, or on Twitter, and we’ll post a roundup later in the week of your best finds!

Read the full story at the Google Latlong blog.

Locations: Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, North America, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom / Categories: Street Views

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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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