words by Pierangela Zandanel
It may not come as a surprise that Italy is covered with photos. Who hasn’t travelled - or wouldn’t like to travel at least once in their lifetime – to Il Bel Paese?
Now this popularity is finally proved thanks to a Google Maps application called Sightsmap.com.
This is an interactive heat map that shows the most photographed locations in the world. It is powered by data from Panoramio, a location-based photo sharing site. The dark and the blue areas have a few photos, the red areas have more and the yellow areas have the most number of photos geo-tagged.
The heat map only takes into account photos posted on Panoramio, which is a much smaller service than something like Flickr or Facebook. The inspiration for heat maps came both from the personalized tourism recommender project Sightsplanner and the World Touristiness Map by Ahti. The app was written by Estonian computer science professor Tanel Tammet.
Though the results on the maps are not surprising, they are still fascinating!
