Praha Stovezatá (The Hundred- Spired Prague)
There’s quite an intriguing net project going on; it consists of panoramatic photographs of the city, taken from 100 Prague spires, especially church towers, using special widescreen lenses and computer editing to manage a 180 degree scope. The city chose the Panoramas company, which does similar deals around the Republic (see www.virtualtravel.cz), to provide the stills.
The page is available in English.
The English version, the Hundred- Spired Prague, welcomes you with a distorted still from a randomly chosen tower, one of the hundred contained of course. You may then click on the choice currently on display in the “Random location” bar, for example Troja Chateau, Prague 1 – Old town. If you do, you will be redirected to the picture, which I recommend to switch to full screen mode. The camera moves slowly from left to right unless you take control, either with help of the toolbar on the bottom of the display, or simply with your mouse, holding the left click button. Using simple controls, it allows you to observe the city underneath, able to turn left/right and up down and also to zoom in on any of the parts of the still. You always see the nearest tower(s), which you could switch to by clicking on an arrow symbol. In case you have a particular spot in mind, click on the “list” button.
The photographs are in high resolution, made in favorable weather and generally very watchable. It’s also an advantage that it is possible to have a look at the spires and towers themselves, since many of them are not accessible to public. It also loads quite easily. You only need a proper Flash software, which is available for free on the Internet.
The project cost around a million CZK and it seems to be money well spent. It works as a powerful ad for a tourist as well as pleasant entertainment for the residents. No matter how well you know the displayed spots, you probably haven’t seen them from this point of view.
By the way, as the authors of the project remind us on the title page, there are more than 100 towers in Prague. A few thousand, actually.
Page: http://stovezata.praha.eu