City guides
Twenty cities, each written up properly. Ten one-click spots, five streets worth following end to end, and several hundred words on what that particular city looks like from the pavement rather than from a photograph.
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Four concentric canals, and gables that lean out over the water on purpose.
10 spots · 5 streets
Bangkok
Thailand
A city built on canals, then paved over most of them.
10 spots · 5 streets
Barcelona
Spain
A perfect grid with the corners cut off, and a Gothic maze beside it.
10 spots · 5 streets
Berlin
Germany
A city where the twentieth century is still visible in the pavement.
10 spots · 5 streets
Budapest
Hungary
Two cities on opposite banks, joined by bridges and argued over for centuries.
10 spots · 5 streets
Cape Town
South Africa
A city wedged between a flat-topped mountain and two oceans' worth of coast.
10 spots · 5 streets
Chicago
United States
Where the skyscraper was invented, on a grid beside an inland sea.
10 spots · 5 streets
Dubai
United Arab Emirates
A city that mostly did not exist forty years ago, built along one road.
10 spots · 5 streets
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
A medieval ridge and a Georgian grid, half a mile apart and nothing alike.
10 spots · 5 streets
Istanbul
Türkiye
A city on two continents, with a strait full of shipping between them.
10 spots · 5 streets
Kyoto
Japan
A thousand years of capital, on a grid borrowed from Chinese planners.
10 spots · 5 streets
Lisbon
Portugal
Rebuilt on a grid after an earthquake, on hills that fought the grid.
10 spots · 5 streets
London
United Kingdom
A city with no plan, which is exactly what makes it worth wandering.
10 spots · 5 streets
Los Angeles
United States
Not one city but forty, connected by road and photographed accordingly.
10 spots · 5 streets
Madrid
Spain
A capital built inland on purpose, with the widest sky of any European city.
10 spots · 5 streets
Mexico City
Mexico
Built on a drained lake, sinking steadily, and enormous in every direction.
10 spots · 5 streets
Mumbai
India
Seven islands joined into one peninsula, and everything squeezed onto it.
10 spots · 5 streets
Munich
Germany
Rebuilt to look old on purpose, with a surfable river running through a park.
10 spots · 5 streets
New York
United States
A numbered grid above 14th Street and complete chaos below it.
10 spots · 5 streets
Paris
France
Nineteenth-century boulevards, medieval lanes, and a river you can follow end to end.
10 spots · 5 streets
Prague
Czechia
A medieval street plan that survived the twentieth century almost intact.
10 spots · 5 streets
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Granite peaks, rainforest and a city squeezed into the gaps between them.
10 spots · 5 streets
Rome
Italy
Three thousand years of building stacked on the same few hills.
10 spots · 5 streets
San Francisco
United States
One of the five cities Street View launched in, and the steepest of them.
10 spots · 5 streets
Seoul
South Korea
Six hundred years of capital, rebuilt twice, with mountains inside the city limits.
10 spots · 5 streets
Singapore
Singapore
An island city-state that planned nearly all of itself, and it shows.
10 spots · 5 streets
Sydney
Australia
A drowned river valley with a city arranged around every inlet of it.
10 spots · 5 streets
Tokyo
Japan
A city with almost no street names, organised in blocks instead.
10 spots · 5 streets
Toronto
Canada
A ravine city with a grid on top, and alleys worth more than the avenues.
10 spots · 5 streets
Venice
Italy
A city with no roads at all, photographed entirely on foot.
10 spots · 5 streets
Vienna
Austria
An imperial capital that turned its city wall into a boulevard.
10 spots · 5 streets
By country
Why write guides for a mapping tool
Because the tool on its own does not tell you where to look. Every competing Street View site is a search box and a map, which is fine if you already know the address you want. It is useless if what you actually want is to look at somewhere interesting.
So each guide answers one question: what is worth opening in this city, and why is it worth opening rather than just looking at a photograph of. Sometimes the answer is a street plan you can only read from above. Sometimes it is a lane too narrow for a car that somebody walked with a backpack camera. Sometimes it is a line of cobblestones marking where a wall used to be.
The guides are also honest about gaps. Montmartre in Paris is patchy because several of its best routes are staircases. The Hollywood Sign cannot be approached by road. Saying so is more useful than pretending everywhere is equally covered.
Common questions
What cities are available in Google Street View?
Most large cities in over a hundred countries, with Western Europe, North America, Japan and Australia close to complete on public roads. This site has written guides for twenty of them, chosen because each one has something specific worth looking for.
What is in a city guide?
Ten one-click spots that open the explorer at that exact point, five streets worth following end to end, several hundred words on what makes that city different from the pavement, and answers to the questions people actually ask about it. That is 465 locations across the twenty guides.
Do I need an account to use the guides?
No. Nothing on this site needs an account, and there is no limit on how many places you can open in a day.
How do you pick which cities to write about?
Each one has to have a genuine reason to be explored this way rather than looked at in photographs. Barcelona has a street grid you can only see from above, Tokyo has alleys captured on foot, Berlin has a line of cobbles marking the Wall. Cities without that angle are not worth a guide.