Abigail Cushman, Section Editor
@abigailccourant
Have you ever heard the phrase “Dance like nobody’s watching”? Well, as we are all in quarantine, this blog will provide weekly updates about what (otherwise unapproachable) activities you can now try out in the safety of your own home since nobody is watching what you do!
Your first trip out of the country? Cancelled. Your annual visit to family in Italy? Cancelled. Your exploration of Asia? Cancelled. However, there is still a way to see those incredible landmarks you’ve been planning to gawk at for months.
Google Arts and Culture, AirPano, and other sights have provided 360 virtual tours of historical locations all over the world. Google Arts and Culture, in particular, provides free virtual tours of the great Colosseum in Rome. Having been lucky enough to visit the Colosseum this past summer, I can guarantee that Google’s virtual tours provide angles you may not even be able to see when visiting the Colosseum in person.
Now, why not travel southwest to the Pyramids of Giza? Or the Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in the Cordillera de Vilcabamba? These free virtual trips, as well as tours of the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower, are all also provided by Google Arts and Culture.
Thanks to AirPano, you can also see the ancient Maya Pyramids at Chichén Itzá in Mexico. This tour includes bird’s-eye views of sites such as El Castillo (also known as the Temple of Kukulcan), the Temple of Warriors, and The Group of the Thousand Columns. Having read a Spanish story surrounding one boy’s trip to Chichén Itzá, I certainly enjoyed exploring such a fascinating historical landmark.
AirPano also shares the beauty of Dubai from a bird’s-eye view at many locations such as Burj Al Arab, Burj Khalifa, and Al Yaqoub Tower. Other AirPano tours locations include the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and even Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
On a site separate from AirPano and Google Arts and Culture, you can also tour the incredible Great Wall of China using 360 images, or pay five dollars for a private virtual tour of Beijing and the Great Wall. Another site has a 360 personal view of Stonehenge at daybreak, and you can even see an accurate surface rendition of Mars thanks to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Google.
