Friday, March 06, 2009

Visit the endangered cultural treasures the Smithsonian magazine highlights in their March 2009 issue

‘Some of the world’s most precious historic and artistic sites can be visited today – but might be gone tomorrow’ states the Smithsonian Staff in their Smithsonian, issue March 2009.

Concerned about the damage on historic sites they point to 10 sites. These sites are endangered and damaged by desperate, ignorant or religious people, people with different priorities and by nature: Wind, earthquakes, water. Pictures, reports, interviews from all over the world describe the sites, decry the loss humankind will suffer if these artifacts are lost.

Traveling for Tree-Huggers
I decided to follow this call to visit these sites, but choose a sustainable, non damaging way to do so, not to mention the savings in time, money and carbon footprint.First, I just thought, well, yes, this is so much less impressive than traveling itself, but bit by bit, byte by byte it became increasingly more valuable. Sure, real travel gives a whole range of experiences nothing can substitute, but this ‘eagle perspective’ has its own charm.

Google Earth discovery
Sitting feet up and laptop leaving burn marks on my legs, a comfortable 70s Fahrenheit breeze coming in through the open window, I started looking on Google Earth to look for these sites and was impressed. Impressed by the sites, and how clear some of them are on Google Earth. Some, most, don’t have much information on Google earth, which was another surprising find when I checked quite some GE (Google Earth J) layers.

Fenestrelle Fortress, Italy
The Fenestrell Fortress (Google Earth KMZ) is in Italy, by Turin, the ‘Great Wall of the Alps’, covering 320 according to the Smith’s.


I would love using the ‘historic view’ feature of Google Earth 4, to see the fort with snow and without, but there seems to be only one picture from December 2005 – with very little snow.

The report and a nice collection of pictures and links on the
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Endangered-Cultural-Treasures-Fenestrelle-Fortress-Italy.html

Some nice pictures on Google image search to the Fenestrelle Fortress: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=fenestrelle%20fortress%20italy&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi .

Check it out!
(more sites to come)

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