Today's Site From Space
St. Mark's Square - (Piazza San Marco)
Viewed from Space on Sightsee By Space
From WikiPedia
Piazza San Marco, often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal square of Venice, Italy.
A remark often attributed to Napoleon (but perhaps more correctly to Alfred de Musset) calls the Piazza San Marco "the drawing room of Europe". It is the only great urban space in a European city where human voices prevail over the sounds of motorized traffic, which is confined to Venice's waterways. It is the only urban space called a piazza in Venice; the others, regardless of size, are called campi.
As the central landmark and gathering place for Venice, Piazza San Marco is extremely popular with tourists, photographers, and pigeons.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Today's Site From Space - St. Mark's Square
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Today's Site From Space - Churchill Downs
Today's Site From Space
Churchill Downs - Home of the Kentucky Derby
Viewed From Space on SightseeBySpace.com
Churchill Downs, located on Central Avenue in south Louisville, Kentucky, is a thoroughbred racetrack most famous for hosting the Kentucky Derby annually. It officially opened in 1875, and held the first Kentucky Derby and the first Kentucky Oaks in the same year. Churchill Downs has also hosted the renowned Breeders' Cup on six occasions, most recently in 2006. Churchill Downs Incorporated owns and operates the racetrack.
The track is named for John and Henry Churchill, who leased 80 acres (320,000 m²) of land to their nephew, Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. (grandson of explorer William Clark). Clark was president of the Louisville Jockey Club and Driving Park Association, which formed in 1874. His father-in-law, Richard Ten Broeck, was an accomplished horse breeder and trainer, and introduced Clark to horse racing, attending the English Derby at Epsom Downs outside London.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Today's Site From Space - Beijing National Stadium
Today's Site From Space
Beijing National Stadium - Viewed From Space on SightSeeBySpace.com
The Beijing National Stadium, also known as the bird's nest for its architecture is a stadium that is being built in Beijing, China for 2007 completion. It will host the main track and field stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics and will be the venue for the Opening and Closing ceremonies as well. In 2002, Government officials engaged architects worldwide in a design competition. Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron collaborated with ArupSport and China Architecture Design & Research Group to win the competition. Contemporary Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, is the Artistic Consultant for design.[1] The stadium will seat as many as 100,000 spectators during the Olympics, but this will be reduced to 80,000 after the games. It has replaced the original intended venue of the Guangdong Olympic Stadium[citation needed]. The stadium is 330 metres long by 220 metres wide, and is 69.2 metres tall. The 250,000 square metre (gross floor area) stadium is to be built with 36 km of unwrapped steel, with a combined weight of 45,000 tonnes. The stadium will cost up to 3.5 billion yuan (~423 million USD/ ~325 million EUR). The ground was broken in December 2003, and construction started in March 2004, but was halted by the high construction cost in August 2004.
See more like this on Sightsee By SpaceTuesday, September 4, 2007
Today's Site From Space - Empire State Building
Today's Site From Space
Empire State Building - Viewed From Space on SightseeBySpace.com
From WikiPedia
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, New York on the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until the construction of the World Trade Center North Tower topped out on December 23, 1970. It is now once again the tallest building in New York, after the destruction of the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate.[3] On June 24, 1986 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.[4]
Monday, September 3, 2007
Today's Site From Space - Arc de Triomphe
The Arc is the linchpin of the historic axis (L'Axe historique) — a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route which goes from the courtyard of the Louvre Palace to the outskirts of Paris. The monument was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806, and its iconographic program pitted heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail and set the tone for public monuments, with triumphant nationalistic messages, until World War I.
The monument stands over 51 meters (165 ft) in height and is 45 meters wide. It is the second largest triumphal arch in existence.[1] Its design was inspired by the Roman Arch of Titus; The Arc de Triomphe is so colossal that three weeks after the Paris victory parade in 1919, marking the end of hostilities in World War I, Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane through it, and was caught in a newsreel.[2]
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Today's Site From Space - Abu Simbel
Today's Site From Space
The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. However, the complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan dam reservoir.
The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan dam on the Nile River. Abu Simbel remains one of Egypt's top tourist attractions.