This is the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The Acroplois has an incredibly ancient history (described in some detail over at Wikipedia), but today it is best known for the most famous surviving building of Ancient Greece, the Parthenon (which is shown in our thumbnail). The Parthenon has stood here for nearly 2,500 years (Wikipedia page), and there’s lots of other ancient sights at here too, so here’s a map of the area in the the time of Socrates and Plato to compare with.

Here in Edinburgh we’ve got the National Monument, a copy of the Parthenon which was unfortunately never finished (supposedly due to a lack of funds), and is known locally as Edinburgh’s Disgrace (Wikipedia page). There’s no high-res of it yet, but I bet you’ll all be glad to hear that I can see it from my bedroom window

There’s another (way more impressive) copy in Centennial Park, Nashville, but again no high-res I’m afraid

Back to ancient Greece, and just east of the Acropolis you can still see the remaining columns of the Temple Of Olympian Zeus (Wikipedia page).

Thanks to… deep breath… Jean Lorraine, Chris Jernigan, Adam Parker, Bltiz, Matt, ray hollis, Martin Willey, Jim L., Ron Vogel, Roland, Stephen Train, Ruben Vermeersch, Salinga, Sig, Matt, GS, Evan O., Bennet Langlotz, Gut, Ellen van Swieten, Greg Askins, Ian, Ken Arnold, Feng Wu, banic, Boniface, martin e, Serge Lyubomudrov, noknok, Richard Cobbe, Scott Kleihege, Fai Sheng and cacafuego.

Here’s one in Saint Lawrence bay, Quebec…

…a beached wreck off the Washington coast…

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

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

As the Google Sightseeing team is based in Edinburgh, this was one of the first places we looked when we found out about Google Maps’ new satellite images. Disappointingly however, they seem to have missed most of Edinburgh when they were choosing high-resolution pictures, in fact Glasgow has also suffered a similar fate!

Fortunately however we can still see the splendid Forth Bridge, complete with a train travelling into Edinburgh. Completed in 1890, it is commonly regarded as an engineering marvel. Just to the west of the rail bridge is the Forth Road Bridge which, while much less impressive than the rail bridge from the ground, has some excellent shadows from up here!

There’s a commonly believed story round these parts that the Forth Rail Bridge requires continual painting; as soon as they finish the job they have to start again at the other side. Apparently it’s not true, but for many years the bridge did have a permanent maintenance crew.

There’s also a tanker anchored in the Firth of Forth, although it’s a bit weird looking at a tanker so near to where I live. I guess somehow I didn’t imagine tankers would be just the same over here…

Thanks to Kerry for pointing me towards this one first, and to the many others who posted it since!