All sights in Europe

Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Hungaroring Formula 1

Sunday, 31st July 2005 by James

Hungaroring is the Hungarian Formula-1 Grand Prix race track, where the 20th Hungarian GP is currently being raced.

Thanks: ilves, Zoltan Marton, Kertész Attila, Rickard Jensen & Mario Sarno

The World’s Largest Gantry Crane

Saturday, 30th July 2005 by James

The 7,560 tonne world’s largest gantry crane at Kockums AB shipyard in Malmö, Sweden also has the world’s largest lifting capacity of 1,500 tonnes. If you’re in Sweden don’t bother trying to go and see it though as in 2002 the crane was sold to Hyundai Heavy Industries who dismantled it, painted it orange and shipped it off to their Offshore Fabrication Yard in Ulsan, South Korea.

The yellow floating crane to the northwest took part in the dismantling process, which you can see from the ground in these numerous photos. You can also see the Kockums crane at its new South Korean home in this photo.

And while we’re on a roll with the big cranes scroll a few screens east for the largest floating crane in the world.

Many thanks to Lars Persson & Rickard Jensen

Fernsehturm, Berlin

Thursday, 28th July 2005 by James

The Fernsehturm (literally, “TV tower”) was built in 1969 and features a revolving cafe and observation deck. Aside from the obvious function of providing TV and radio signals for the city the underlying motivation for the tower was to create a powerful political symbol in East Germany that could be seen by the West.

The buildings around the tower appear to be in the shape of an aeroplane, but I couldn’t find anything saying if this was intentional or not. Also look for the tower’s large shadow extending to the North, the train station ‘Alexanderplatz’ just to the east and the orange roofed church St. Marien to the west .

Thanks: Matt Sauer, Pat Rafferty, Roland, Kristian, DJ Swammi, Henryk Plötz, Markus

More Scotch Tape

Monday, 25th July 2005 by Alex

Remember our giant piece of Scotch Tape holding Canada together? Well our ever-helpful readers have since turned up several more pieces of this gargantuan sticky-tape…

Firstly we have this enormous length of tape, which is actually holding Ghana and Ivory Coast together. Not high-resolution on this one, but at the eastern end the tape fades out rather prettily into some lovely clouds.

Ghana Scotch Tape

Next up is this semi-transparent tape stitching a large section of the Libyan desert together. Notice how all of these anomalies run at very similar angles across the images?

Libyan Tape

Finally we have this shoddy looking job in Russia, which appears to have required two pieces of tape to get the job done! I think their mistake was trying to tape water together…

Russian Tape

Thanks: Dave, Winterfresh, Alxdr, mcb, blumentopf and MoonFella.

Scimitar Pool

Friday, 22nd July 2005 by James

According to submitter “Roberto” this house is owned by a local butcher who had his swimming pool built in the shape of his company’s logo, a Scimitar sword.

I checked our submissions database and there were no other custom-made pools in recognisable shapes. I’m sure there must be loads out there so if you can find any then please leave a comment on here :D

Battersea Powerstation

Tuesday, 19th July 2005 by James

Battersea Powerstation was constructed in the early 1930s but has been disused since the late 70s. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (who also designed the classic red phoneboxes) the power station is probably most famous for starring alongside an inflatable pig on the cover of Pink Floyd’s album, ‘Animals‘.

Since they pulled out the generating equipment there has been no roof on the building so we can see right into the middle, which could easily house Trafalgar Square and St Paul’s Cathedral (it’s one of the largest brick structures in Europe). Soon it will all be gone to make way for trendy apartments, posh hotels and sculptured gardens. For more info and ground level panoramas see the BBC site.

Thanks: Reagan Blundell, Bertrand Capo, Wayne, GazH (UK), Richard Wild, russ, Charles Chow & Andy

More Shipwrecks

Monday, 18th July 2005 by Alex

Here’s one in Saint Lawrence bay, Quebec…

St. Lawrence Shipwreck

…a beached wreck off the Washington coast…

Washington Coast Shipwreck

…and finally a super-cool submerged ship in the river Clyde, near Glasgow! (it’s great posting Scottish things :-D )

Clyde Shipwreck

Thanks to Jacob, Jonny, troy, DDA, Jonathan Hoppe, Patrick, Joel Leo, Mike and Gus (from the comments).

Ship Graveyard

Friday, 15th July 2005 by Alex

Update: Turns out that this is actually just an image glitch, thanks to everyone who helped clear that up. Still cool though ;-)

Check out this fantastic image of half-sunk ships in Greece. Spooky!

Sunken Ships

Props to Mike for this little beauty :-)