Continuing the never-ending stream of “World’s largest…” we present The World’s Largest Portrait, which adorns the hills of Erzincan in Turkey.

The massive 7.5 square km painting is of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey until his death in 1938. Despite his passing some time ago, Atatürk’s face is still a very popular image and is featured on banknotes, public buildings, schools, and (in this case) mountains.

The image was painted in 1982 by the order of the then-ruling military junta and it took 3000 soldiers just under a month to finish their handiwork.

Over the years the Turkish army have continued to write on the country’s hills, more recently writing one of Ataturk’s favourite sayings: “Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene!“.

With the second largest standing armed force in NATO (after the much larger USA), perhaps the soldiers have spare time on their hands?

Previously: Portraits Paintings in Google Earth.

Thanks to ssaatci and baharbahar

This is Eski Rum Yetimhanesi, on the island of Buyukada off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey. I can’t verify this as Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have any information, but apparently:

it was built as a hotel, although it never received permission from the government to operate as one, so a rich Greek family bought it and donated it to the church, which used it as an orphanage until the 1970s. Since then, it’s been empty.

The building is 101 metres long and around 24 metres high, and appears to be the largest wooden building in Europe (although that’s assuming you choose to decide that Turkey is in Europe, and not Asia… because the Todaiji temple in Japan (Wikipedia page) claims to be the biggest in the world).

Thanks to deniz erdem.

This is the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey. Interestingly, as the Bosporus strait is the boundary between Europe and Asia, the bridge actually connects two continents. In May 2005 tennis star Venus Williams played a show game on the bridge, making it the only game of tennis to be played on two continents (Wikipedia entry).

Just beside the Bosporus Bridge is an absolutely huge tanker, has anyone seen one bigger than this?

Further north up the Bosporus strait is another bridge which joins Europe with Asia, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge (Wikipedia entry).

Thanks: Martin Willey, Marc Armstrong, Jonathan Rawle, deniz erdem, Serkan Kasapbasi, Seref

Deep in the Asian part of Turkey is this giant image of the Turkish flag. The writing (which is Turkey’s national slogan), says ‘Ne mutlu Türküm diyene’, meaning ‘How happy is he who can say “I am a Turk”‘.

Thanks to Ali Ok.