360 Degree Panoramas of 275 World Heritage Sites

Patrimonium-mundi.org is undertaking an ambitious project to capture and share 360 degree panoramas of all of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Currently, Patrimonium-mundi.org is up to 275 panoramic images of World Heritage sites. Visitors can rotate all of the images and some of the images allow you to zoom in and zoom out to look at the details of World Heritage sites. You can locate panoramas by browsing the world map or by searching for a site in the search box.

Applications for Education
Patrimonium-mundi.org could be a excellent supplement to your geography lessons. Students could explore the images on their own or you could use the images as conversation starters in your lessons.

Tour CERN's Large Hadron Collider

360 Cities hosts 360 degree panoramas of landmarks around the world. (Turn on the 360 Cities layer in Google Earth for some great imagery). One of the neat panoramas that science teachers might like to view is of CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The panorama allows you to spin and zoom through the interior of CERN.


CERN CMS 4 in Europe

Thanks to Danny Nicholson for Tweeting the link.

And for a really fun overview of the CERN Large Hadron Collider watch this rap video made by an American scientist working on the CERN project.

4 Ways to View the World in Panoramic

Google Maps Streetview provides a great way for students to explore cities and interesting places around the world. As good as Streetview is, it isn't available for all places (like the peak of Mount Everest) and sometimes even where it is available it leaves something to be desired. Here are four sites and services featuring high-quality panoramic and interactive imagery of famous and interesting places around the world.

Arounder is a free site that offers 3D views of famous places in European cities, North American locations, and the Moon. The imagery is very clear and detailed. Visitors can explore 360 degrees of each image using the simple navigation tools that appear at the bottom of every image. When you're on the Arounder homepage click on a city to see a map of that city. Then click on the red(ish) placemark icons to explore the imagery.

360 Cities provides extremely clear panoramic imagery of places around the world. The bulk of the images are of places in Europe, but there is also some great imagery from North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. The panoramic imagery of 360 Cities is so clear and transitions so smoothly that I almost made myself dizzy while playing around with imagery of Atlanta, Georgia. Images on 360 Cities can be explored online using the Google Map provided on the 360 Cities website or you can view the imagery in the 360 Cities Google Earth layer. 360 Cities imagery can also be embedded into your blog or website.

View At provides panoramic views of dozens of notable places from around the world. The panoramic views can be viewed on the View At website or viewed in Google Earth. Although they offer different views, in many ways View At is similar to 360 Cities.

Panoramas.dk hosts dozens of interactive panoramas from around the world. The panorama that must have been the most difficult to capture is this view from the peak of Mount Everest. The list of interactive panoramas includes views of cultural festivals and tourist attractions. The database of US panoramic views includes the Grand Canyon, the Jefferson Memorial, and two dozen other panoramas.

Arounder - 360 Degree Tours of Cities and the Moon

Arounder is a free site that offers 3D views of famous places in European cities, North American locations, and the Moon. The imagery is very clear and detailed. Visitors can explore 360 degrees of each image using the simple navigation tools that appear at the bottom of every image. When you're on the Arounder homepage click on a city to see a map of that city. Then click on the red(ish) placemark icons to explore the imagery.












I learned about Arounder from a post on Make Use Of.

Applications for Education
Arounder reminds me of 360 Cities. Both services provide very clear 3D imagery that could be a good supplement to other virtual tours your students explore on Google Maps or Google Earth.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
360 Degree View From the Peak of Mount Everest
Tour the Sistine Chapel Online
Create a National Parks Virtual Tour

360 Cities - Embeddable Panoramic Images

360 Cities, a panoramic image collection that I've written about in the past, now publishes an embed code with each image. This is a great improvement to the service as it will allow students and teachers greater flexibility when building virtual tours. The imagery in 360 Cities, as you will see in the image below, is much better than that typically found in Google's Street View imagery.



view Panoramic photography of Günzburg Frauenkirche

Applications for Education
360 Cities offers high quality imagery that students and teachers can use in creating virtual tours. 360 Cities has a Google Earth layer that you can use to view and navigate through the image collections.

360 Cities Now Available as Google Earth Layer

360 Cities, a provider of high quality panoramic views of cities around the world, is now available as a Google Earth layer. This layer will enable Google Earth users to explore the high quality panoramic photography of 360 Cities inside Google Earth.

Read more about 360 Cities in my previous review here. To download the 360 Cities layer for Google Earth click here.

Applications for Education
The new 360 Cities layer for Google Earth provides another great resource for creating virtual fly-over tours in Google Earth. One way that I can see this new layer being used is to have students create stories about traveling somewhere far from home. Then have the students create a fly-over tour to match the story.

360 Cities - Panoramic Interactive Imagery Clear Enough to Make You Dizzy

360 Cities provides extremely clear panoramic imagery of places around the world. The bulk of the images are of places in Europe, but there is also some great imagery from North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. I have not found any images of Australia on 360 Cities.

The panoramic imagery of 360 Cities is so clear and transitions so smoothly that I almost made myself dizzy while playing around with imagery of Atlanta, Georgia.

Images on 360 Cities can be explored online using the Google Map provided on the 360 Cities website or you can view the imagery in Google Earth.

Applications for Education
360 Cities provides some of the best free interactive panoramic imagery that I've found on the web. The user controls over the views are easy to use and very smooth. The images don't jump or blur as you change perspectives.
Just as with Google's Street View option, 360 Cities could be a great resource for students to use on self-guided virtual tours.