The area around Larderello¹ in Tuscany’s Cecina valley has an abundance of hot wells (lagoni) and natural steam fountains (sofioni), where the escaping steam leaves the ground under very high pressure at temperatures of over 200°C; making it ideal for power generation.

The gases released here also smell strongly of sulphur, which is why this is known as Valle del Diavolo – “The Devil’s Valley”.

A working geothermal generator (using a steam-powered piston engine) was demonstrated² here as early as 1904, and Larderello actually became the location of the world’s first geothermal power plant all the way back in 1913! Today, over one third of the electricity consumed in Tuscany is produced by local geothermal plants.

The whole countryside around the town is criss-crossed by large insulated pipelines transporting superheated steam from the wells to the power station.

In 2005, nearly 10% of the world’s geothermal electricity was produced in Larderello, but as more, high-tech geothermal power stations have been built around the world, this proportion has shrunk dramatically.

You can take a guided tour if you’re in the area, of which one of the highlights is a steam outlet that the tour guide opens with a remote control to create a deafeningly loud, and very impressive-looking column of steam:

You can read more about Geothermal power at Wikipedia.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Buildings, Structures, Volcanoes

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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.

The second part of this examination of Calatrava’s work looks at some of his most famous and notable buildings.

Thanks to Redder Zooming.

Locations: Argentina, Ireland, Italy, Spain / Categories: Bridges, Shadows, Street Views, Structures

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The giant wave completely destroyed five villages, killing almost 2,000 people, maybe even more. Strangely, the dam itself was relatively undamaged and still stands today, with the upstream face largely buried beneath the landslide. Although the communities (the largest of which was Longarone) have been rebuilt, they are very different places than before the disaster. Many of the survivors were relocated to a newly built town 35km away, also called Vajont¹, and the valley is now home to many more industries. Apparently this has been a source of controversy in the area: the victims were offered tax breaks by the government to help them rebuild their lives, but many of these privileges ended up being bought from them by large corporations.

Not long after the disaster, it became clear that it had been avoidable. During construction of the dam, cracks and movement of the mountainside were noticed on several occasions, and the owners (the electricity firm SADE) were warned that the geology of the site was unstable. Still they went ahead with filling the lake, even after a smaller landslip occurred, three years before the fatal collapse, which required an artificial gallery to be built before filling could continue. Despite all that emerged, it seems that the firm escaped with fairly minor punishment.

There is lots more information and pictures of the dam as it looks today on this site, and, as ever, at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Andrea Barbarino.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Structures

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The “Quaranta” (Italian for “Forty”), is the latest concept from Italdesign Giugiaro who specialise in prototyping next-generation cars, and have designed everything from Bugattis and Ferarris to Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat Unos.

It would hardly be a concept car without an airplane-cockpit style seating arrangement, but this one also has a solar-panelled roof and a hybrid engine. The manufacturer claims that it can do 0-60 in around 4 seconds, with a top speed of 155mph. If this is true, it would make the Quaranta the fastest hybrid car in the world.

Of course the Quaranta isn’t just out for a quick spin – immediately behind it we find a whole truck full of production crew and camera-men! Presumably the truck is about to overtake the car to capture some footage, but we can’t tell what they were filming for.

Perhaps there’s one clue however – does anyone else thinks the driver looks a bit like Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond?

There’s tons of detailed pictures of the Quaranta on Flickr or a video about its design (in Italian) on Youtube.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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When we first posted our notorious Topless Sunbather here on Google Sightseeing back in September 2006, half the world seemed to be appalled that a person’s privacy should be invaded in such a way and then posted on the Internet, and the other half wanted higher resolution images.

Evaluating the situation again nearly 3 years later, it seems that only half the people got what they wanted.

When Google launched their controversial Street View service in the US, we saw all sort of things that the press were appalled at; including our own post of the Google Street Fight that went on to become one of the best known Street View sightings. Perhaps because of the way US culture operates, we saw violence in the streets – but sexually explicit images never appeared within the US Street View images to any great extent.

On our Google Sightseeing Twitter page we’ve been posting Street View sights for nearly a year now, and we’ve seen the occasional poster or painting showing partially clothed women, but the inevitable Topless Street View Sunbather never materialised… that is until last week’s launch of Street View in the UK and the Netherlands, which also brought updates to several European countries that already had partial coverage.

Google anticipated some of this of course; they chose to skirt around the edges of Amsterdam’s Red Light District rather than have to remove all of the images later. Of course they couldn’t avoid them all, and they did inadvertently capture several images of prostitutes sitting in their windows. In Groningen one woman was even seen showing off an extensive range of sex toys. Although these images have all now been removed, none of them showed any nudity to speak of.

In contrast to the Dutch prostitution system, in Italy the prostitutes can often be seen on Google Street View sitting in their folding chairs while awaiting some passing trade. What doesn’t seem to be so common however, is for them to be sitting with their breasts entirely exposed.

So there we have it. Unlike with pixellated aerial photos, there’s no doubting what we can see here – this image clearly shows a woman’s naked breasts on Google’s Street View service, and at time of writing it remains visible within the Google Maps imagery¹. In fact there are a number of women with their breasts exposed in the Italian images.

Here in Europe it’s perfectly acceptable for a woman to wear nothing but a thong when she visits the beach, so it’s hardly surprising that the Street View car captured the following images when driving through Lazio (again, these images are both still available on Google at time of writing).

Google Street View has been getting a lot of grief from the UK’s papers in the last few days, most of which has been blatant scaremongering. There’s really nothing wrong with there being a picture of your house on the internet – it presents no increased risk to your security or privacy. Just like Google’s satellite images, the community-positive local and global benefits² of Street View will outweigh the unfounded, hypothetical fears concocted by newspapers with column inches to fill.

Seeing inappropriate images is another matter. In truth nobody expects to find breasts on their mapping service, despite the differing attitudes of people of different nationalities. While there are a small number of images that inadvertently appeared on Street View which should be removed³ – if it turns out that these woman don’t have a problem with letting the world see their breasts, then should Google remove their image at the request of somebody else?

On a related note, I wonder if this image of a semi-naked Glaswegian enjoying the summer sun will be removed?

Locations: California, Italy, Netherlands, Scotland / Categories: Rudeness, Street Views

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This next image of exactly the same area is from Microsoft Live Maps, and far from simply being a much older image taken before the facility was built, this was actually captured in 2007…

Thanks to widespread coverage, many people are now familiar with the idea that “sensitive” areas of our planet are being hidden from view in the images that online mapping services display.

It’s also commonly understood that the images are usually altered by the company who originally took them (rather than Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or any other buyer), allowing them to remain in line with their local laws and regulations.

Such areas include military installations, government buildings, and airports – but the point is usually simply to prevent people from viewing the exact details of the site, rather than attempting to deny their very existence.

Last year we saw some imagery in the Netherlands had been altered in a more dramatic way – drawing the ridicule of the Photoshop Disasters blog in the process – which in turn led to even wider recognition of the attempted cover up.

Well, it seems that the companies engaged in these activities have been paying attention, because closer examination of the supposed location of NAS Sigonella reveals that while there are clearly artificial repetitions of parts of the image, the overall result is by far the best Photoshop job we’ve seen on either MS Live or Google Maps.

Unfortunately, to the west of the site we can still see part of a runway that our inexperienced Photoshopper neglected to cover up – so there’s definitely still room for improvement.¹

So is this the start of a new trend? Will satellite and aerial photography companies now need to employ full time digital artists to hide things the governments don’t want you to see? Or is this just another example of Microsoft attempting to up the ante against Google?

Read more about NAS Sigonella at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Al Cohole.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Aircraft, Weirdness

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Many congratulations to Julien and Alexei, who have both now translated more posts than there are days in the year!

Since then both sites have grown considerably – proving very popular with their readers, and both Julien and Alexei have started writing their own unique posts too.

In addition to French and Italian now have Google Sightseeing Deutsch translated by Jenni and Joel Fuchs, who are working really hard to bring Google Sightseeing to the German speaking world, and Google Sightseeing Nederlands which has been recently re-launched by the able team of Karel Gillissen and Willem Hage.

Recent highlights of our translators doing their own posts have been Julien’s French version of our Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Britain, entitled Top 10 des noms de villes grossiers en France, and the Jenni and Joel’s rude German version – Top 10 Unanständigste Ortsamen in Deutschland.

Of course we’re not done with our quest to bring satellite sightseeing to the world! Over at Google Sightseeing Español we’re currently looking for a new Spanish writer to continue the excellent work Eduardo Moreno began and If you’re a GSS reader who is fluent in a language other than English, perhaps you’d like to get involved? We’d love to hear from you if you think there’s a case for bringing Google Sightseeing to your mother tongue!

Locations: France, Italy / Categories: Site News

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This combination inevitably results in the occasional accident, and as the Google car approaches this corner a man can be seen getting out his car, although we can’t yet tell why.

As the Google car draws nearer we see that the inevitable has occurred – a scooter rider has been struck from behind and thrown from his bike! It seems that this is such a frequent occurrence however, that the passers-by barely care that a man has been run over.

Our Google driver is equally considerate, and drives around the fallen scooter driver like he was a misplaced traffic cone.

As the car drives on, we can rubberneck back around to see that there appears to be some disagreement taking place! Is another street fight about to kick off perhaps?

Oh dear, it seems that our unfortunate car driver may have a dent in the bumper of his Mercedes.

This is it, it’s all going to kick off now! Get ready for a pounding!

Suddenly however, things seem to have cooled off. Perhaps our scooter rider saw sense and decided it wasn’t worth it. He returns to his bike and tries to get it back up on its wheels. He doesn’t appear to be doing very well however!

Fortunately our car driver decides to put their disagreement aside, and just before the imagery changes to a different day, we can see the two men working together to get the toppled scooter back on the road.

Oh, it gives you a kind of fuzzy feeling huh?

Thanks to Edward Betts.

Update: Post corrected to say he was driving a scooter, rather than a moped, which would usually have pedals.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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Here at the Colosseum in Rome, a couple found a perfect way to fool the camera… by engaging in a steamily passionate kiss!

This kiss was so passionate in fact, that someone at Google appears to have been charged with manually pixellating the offending image – presumably to save us the embarrassment of having to see a couple kissing.

Like no-one’s ever seen that on the Internet before…

What is interesting though, is that they bothered to pixellate the image themselves, rather than (as we’ve seen many times before) just remove the image completely. Presumably this is thanks to the fact that the Colosseum is one of Italy’s most famous tourist destinations.

The moral of the story? If you want to be seen on Google Street View doing something outrageous, make sure you’re in front of a hugely recognisable landmark.

Locations: Italy / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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On closer examination however – it seems like a strange place to be trawling for sex. And what is the woman doing exactly? And what are the things at her feet? Bottles perhaps, but what for?

So Italians, is this a well known pick up spot? Or is there something more pedestrian going on?

Locations: Italy / Categories: Rudeness, Street Views

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