Go to Rome’s Piazza Navona on a Saturday night in July and you’ll find yourself having to pick your way through the crowds of locals and tourists, some standing in large semi-circles watching a unicyclist juggle with fire or a guitarist play his Led Zeppelin back catalogue, others perusing the displays of gaudy paintings on wooden easels and trying to avoid buying a rose from street sellers. It’s one of the main hubs of Roman night life: the area’s bars and granita vendors are usually thronged and groups of barefoot college students jostle with each other around Bernini‘s famous Fountain…
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London may be one of the world’s greatest cities with a plethora of stunning heritage and monstrous museums, but no visit to England is complete without seeing some of the south of England’s incredible green scenery. Beginning on the south-eastern top of Greater London and stretching all the way down to the English Channel, Kent is not only one of England’s largest counties but one of its most beautiful. Luscious rolling hills and miles of green expanse give some parts of the area a Middle-Earthly look, and its villages and hamlets are among the nation’s most picturesque. Kent is also…
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Continuing the Google Earth Tours here at Heritage Key, which have so far covered Rome, Athens and London, this week’s tour looks at Ancient sites across the historically rich nation of Egypt. An ancient civilisation which boasts some of the most famous relics in the world, such as The Great Pyramid of Giza and the Temple at Thebes. By bringing together aerial photography with 3D virtual environments, we can use Google Earth to scan across the surface of Egypt and see the sites and relics that remain of this great civilisation. This tour is complete with those clickable Heritage Key…
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The UCLA team creatingand updating a virtual model of Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves, have now released free photos and videos of their work, which are now available to view and download from their website. Their project started in 2005 and has been continuing ever since,adding new archaeological information as it comes along. It includes a number of photos, and short videos which you can watch in high definition on their site, or on youtube. The main aim of the project is not to bolster any one theory on how Qumran, or the…
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London is a massive metropolis, buzzing with energy and bags of history to boot. Well now you can see the city’s top ancient sights, all handily presented in our custom Google Earth flyover. For there’s plenty more to London than its monstrous museums – though they’re all pretty good too – and this map gives you the chance to plan a first-time visit, tell a friend or just take a day out to explore London’s proud heritage. There’s no shortage of events either; check our calendar page for the pick of the city’s listings, which include this year’s British Archaeology…
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The Foro Romano is a stunning relic of Roman architecture that remains in Rome, and is beautifully captured on High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging film by jaqudo who uses the technique to capture the details and perfect the shading in the photograph. Combined with an angle which accentuates the lines and structure of this iconic piece of Roman history. The Roman Forum was the home of the Senate and venue to large public meetings, and was located in the centre of Rome and thus the heart of the Roman Empire. It was here where the economic, political and judicial systems…
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Last week I used Google Earth to show you a tour around the ancient relics of Rome, flyover over the city and looking at all the 3D models with clickables to get extra information from Heritage Key. This week, I’ve decided to spruce up Jon’s tour of the Acropolis of Ancient Greece so you can have a look at one of the most magnificent relics from the ancient age, as well as the New Acropolis Museum. Again, the tour utilises aerial photography with 3D models to give a realistic and innovative look at how the ancient world still exists in…
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According to a recent article in the Smithsonian magazine, parts of southern France’s Roman heritage are disappearing fast. Worse still, they are being lost to new building sites, motorways and developments west of the busy tourist area of the Cte d’Azur. Of particular concern is the gradual disappearance of one of the Roman empire’s artery roads the via Aurelia, which once stretched all the way from Rome to France. The section of it in question lies in Provence between Nice and Arles and was originally built by Augustus as a means of dominating the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the…
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You’ve just finished a Calippo, had a lunchtime cider and staggered towards the tube in shorts and flip flops – and not a green leaf in site. You stumble onto a packed train and instantly lose ten pints of water, face buried in the pungent pits of a Bulgarian banker. You could go to the city’s myriad museums this weekend to grab a piece of the ancient world – but why not escape the madness of the metropolis, and get your fix outside the city limits? Three beautiful Roman villas are waiting for you with open arms, and stunning scenery.…
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Nowhere in the international arts does the classic meet the modern quite as head on as at the Epidaurus Festival – Athens’ annual celebration of contemporary creativity and performance, which has undergone a radical rebirth in recent years. Once a stuffy institution revolving exclusively around classic Greek dramas staged in ancient venues, under the stewardship of director Yorgos Loukos since 2005, Epidaurus has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and now showcases the cutting edge of fresh and vibrant theatre, music, literature, dance and performing arts – both national and international – in the Greek capital throughout…