On to Italy, for many world travelers the most popular of European countries to visit. We introduce it both as a satellite mosaic and as a map showing the states and principal cities:
Rome, the capital of modern Italy and of the Great Roman Empire of the late pre- and early-Christian eras, is visible as a large bluish-black blotch in from the center left of this Landsat-1 image, lying about 30 km (20 miles) inland east from the Tyrrhenian Sea at the port of Ostia. Rome is astride lowlands that, to the east, are up against the spine of Italy, the Apennine Mountains, which here are partly snow-covered in February. The Eternal City lies midway between two ancient volcanoes, the Sabatini caldera, water-filled with Lago di Bracciano to the northwest, and the Latian volcano to the southeast with its small lake along which Castel Gondolfo, the summer home of the Popes, is located.
A closer look at Latium, the province of Rome when it was a Republic, and Rome itself, extending to the sea at Ostia, is given in this Landsat-7 ETM+ image.
Although Athens may be considered the Cradle of Western Civilization, Rome is where not only hellenistic culture, but laws, great engineering feats, and the eventual center of pre-Byzantine Christianity all extended great influence on modern life. Because of the great historical significance of Rome, we will show several additional space and ground/aerial images to give you a better insight into this famed city. The first was taken by ESA's PROBA satellite.
Let's look into ancient (plus modern) Rome itself. This next image was taken by the IKONOS 4 meter resolution camera, and shows central Rome. Near the image center is the Rome of the Empire, with its cluster of famous buildings on the Seven Hills (including several forums, baths, the Pantheon, the Circus Maximus). The large buildings are on the Palantine Hill. Most conspicuous in the image is the great Coliseum (oval building)
This general map of central Rome should help you to search for several of the famed landmarks of this great city:
Now look at this model of ancient central Rome and try to locate some of the features shown in the above map:
The scene below zeros in on this colossal Roman Coliseum (well known to those who saw the movie "Gladiator"). In this IKONOS (Space Imaging Corp.) black and white image, autos in the modern world can be picked out but the sensor lacks the time device that could picture ancient lions on the floor of the Coliseum.
Much of this building survives today, as evident in this ground photo:
A must-see part of Rome actually isn't a legal segment of the city. The Vatican is a small (109 acres) enclave west of central Rome that is the smallest independent state in the world, i.e., technically is not part of Italy even though embedded in Rome. Here is a view of St. Peter, the world's largest church, with its two curved arms that embrace the huge square (Piazza) designed in the 16th Century by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
This is how the Vatican, with its great plaza that can hold hundreds of thousands of faithful when the Pope speaks from the balcony, looked to IKONOS:
With that as a landmark, try in this next aerial shot to locate the church, and the part of Rome that lies to its northeast. The large wooded area is a park known as the Villa Borghese. Try to find the large Castel Sant' Angelo just off the Tiber River, where Tosca took her final leap in Puccini's opera of the same name.
While Rome is a "must see" visit, the rest of Italy is equally fascinating. The largest city in the southern half of the Italian "boot" is Naples, seen here in an ESA SAR image.
The "boot" of Italy seems to be kicking something. That is the island of Sicily seen in this MODIS image:
Reversing directions, we look briefly at the city in Italy that was highlighted on page 4-4: Florence, the seat of the Renaissance. First, is a SAR image that shows how the city is nestled within the Apennine mountains. Then a high resolution view made by the JAXA satellite.
For those interested in the arts, especially painting and sculpture, Florence is the "must-see" city in all of Europe. Two famous places there are the Pitti Palace and the Uffizzi gallery. Michelangelo is the dominant artist in this beautiful city; the Medici family is its best known Renaissance characters. Here is Michelangelo's Tomb of the Medicis:
Now, we head north from Florence to look first at the largest city in the Po Valley. Nestled near the Alps is the industrial city of Milan, seen here in this Landsat-4 image:
Landmarks abound in this town. Well known is the Duomo or cathedral, with its gothic spires but also with the Italian flare:
The most famous opera house in the world is La Scala, where some of the operas of Verdi and Puccini were premiered:
Next, let's take a glance at the head of the Adriatic where the canal city of Venice is located. First, to set it in context to the mainland, examine this ASTER image.
Then, we move a bit closer to look at Venice (the old town is the island below the image center) and the Mainland (Maestri) as seen by IRS-1: Then, this is how the astronauts on the International Space Station saw the islands that include Venice proper (Canal Grande), with north to the right.: The closest view yet has been made by IKONOS; the Rialto and the Grand Canal stand out:
This ground photo, looking along the Grand Canal, is the scene that most of us conjure up when asked to think of Venice; the bridge is evident in the IKONOS image and helps to place this view in context:
Venice, a city founded in the 5th Century AD, is now under serious threat of being gradually inundated by the Adriatic. Rise in sea level and a slow sinking as ground water is withdrawn from the islands are causing a rise in water level by an average 3 mm. a year. In recent years this has led to flooding of the Piazza San Marco by as much as 60 times a year, as shown in this photo (big question: will the famed pigeons be replaced by ducks?):
Various solutions to save the main island are being tried: pumping water back into aquifers; sealing off ground floors; putting floodgates to prevent water from the Adriatic entering the lagoon during high water and storms; replanting stabilizing eel grass on mudflats; deepening the lagoon. But if global warming brings about the threatened major rise in sea level, Venice proper may become a city in the sea rather than by the sea. Plan your visit soon.
East of Italy is the large area of Europe known as the Balkans. At its southern end is the historically famed Greece, seen in this annotated image:
You may have explored the tip of the Balkans in the detailed consideration of Athens in the Answers to the Quiz after page 9 of this Section. But, in case you skipped that Quiz, here is a SPOT image of this famed center of western culture:
In the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas are numerous islands. One of notoriety is Santorini, seen here. Where there presently is a wide lagoon, that area was once a filled in mass of land supporting a large stratocone volcano, along whose sides were several ancient towns. About 1600 B.C. the volcano exploded catastrophically, killing all on the island (known then as Thera) and many in Crete (by a tsunami sea wave), bringing to an abrupt end the great Minoan civilization. Fables about a lost city of Atlantis may indeed refer to the destruction of this island, which today is judged so safe (almost no chance of an eruption) that modern towns have been established there for centuries:
Now we will look at northern Greece, Albania, and a bit of Croatia, along with the heel of Italy. This Landsat subscene includes the Bay of Kotor and, upcoast, the medieval city of Dubrovnik and the island of Korcula [birthplace of Christopher Columbus]):
This next image continues further up the Adriatic east coast to Trieste in easternmost Italy (upper left). Sarajevo, where the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 setting off World War I, is in the interior. Belgrade and the Danube Valley appear near the top of the image (a mosaic):
Several of the major cities in this southeastern part of Europe are now shown. The first images show Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, and then Belgrade, the capital of the now shrunken Yugoslavia which had included Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro in its larger post-World War II status.
Bulgaria is another Balkan country. Its capital is Sofia, seen here in this SPOT image:
To Bulgaria's north is Romania (initially a province of Imperial Rome, which accounts for the latin influence in the Romanian language). Its capital is Bucharest, shown in this Landsat image:
Although attacked during the last stages of the Second World War, much of Bucharest escaped serious damage. It has grown now into a modern city:
The Carpathian Mountains cut through Romania and extend into southern Poland:
We next want to look at the most majestic mountain scenery in Europe - the Alps, first with a look at the highest mountain in the Alps, in France, then at all of Switzerland and finally, in some detail, Austria. In the Landsat 7 ETM+ scene below is much of the French Alps (one of the images (Item B) in the Quiz of Section 6 showing the Rhone Valley includes this region as well). Also, look at the mosaic of the entire Alps on page 7-3. In the Landsat and SPOT images is the famed Mont Blanc (4807 m; 15707 ft; highest in Western Europe) first climbed in the 1870s.
The next scene in a space imagery mosaic of all of Switzerland (bounded by white lines); note that much of the northern half consists of lowlands and low mountains.
One of the great cities of Switzerland is Geneva, which is a center for international law. The city is situated at the west end of Lake Geneva (Lake Leman), shown in the astronaut photo below 
The largest city in Switzerland is Zurich, located at the north end of Lake Zurich, not far from the German border. Here is an ESA SAR image of the city and low hills around it. The black lines at the top are runways at its airport; these appear dark here because they act as a specular mirror when radar waves strike them, thus giving a minimum of backscatter.
A similar-type mosaic presents all of Austria, with mountains everywhere except to the north and east of Vienna (Plains of Hungary). Below it is a map of Austria showing the principal citis.
To set north-central Austria into context from space, here is an Envisat ASAR radar image of Salzburg in a valley in the Alps (shown prominently in the movie "Sound of Music")
Look at a high resolution space view of this charming small city set in a valley drained by the Salz River.
Here is a photo of the city of Salzburg, famed for its music festivals honoring Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born there in 1756 (he actually hated the town, partly because of its provincialism but mainly because of his servitude to the unappreciative Archbishop Collaredo).
This photo shows the castle on a promentory and the Cathedral below. Many should remember it from the wedding of Maria and the Baron von Trapp in the "Sound of Music".
Then on to Vienna, for several centuries the music capital of the world that attracted such classical notables as Joseph Hadyn, Wolfgang Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg. Here first is a Landsat overview:
The city itself (blue area) lies along the Danube River at the eastern tip of the Austrian Alps - location of the famed Vienna Woods. This next image is an IKONOS detail of the central city, lying within the broad streets which tie together as the Ringstrasse:
Below is a map of this part of the city:
Here is a panorama of Vienna seen looking west from the Danube River, with the Vienna Woods hills in the background:
In that view is a high steeple. This is St. Stephens Cathedral, at 405 feet the highest point in the city. The next scene shows that Cathedral with the AugustinaKirche in the left foreground:
A walk through the buildings of Old Wien gives a flavor for the medieval part of this city.
Finally, one of Vienna's most famous building's - the Opera House on the Ringstrasse. The building we see below is an almost exact copy of the 19th century original edifice that was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War and then rebuilt as a duplicate. It was here in 1986 that I spent $100 U.S. for a ticket to hear Bizet's Carmen - the biggest splurge in my musical life.
Several hundred miles northeast of Vienna is the picturesque city of Prague, now the capital of the Czech Republic. When the writer (NMS) visited it in 1968 it was part of Czechoslovakia, but the eastern half has separated into Slovakia, a separate country now. Bratislava is the capital city of Slovakia, seen in this SPOT image:
Here is a satellite view of Prague:
Add to this a Quickbird-2 image of part of Prague at 4 meter resolution:
Now, look at Prague from these low-angle aerial photographs:
A feel for the scenery of this lovely city is offered by this ground photo of the Prague Castle and the St. Vitus Church:
The writer (NMS) and his wife were visiting Prague as I participated in the International Geological Congress held in this city. This was the time of the "Prague Spring" when Alexander Dubcek was leading his country into a rapprochement with their Soviet masters. Tensions were high. On the night of August 22, 1968, being a light sleeper I was awakened by a loud noise sounding like a low flying jet aircraft. This was repeated thrice in the next 5 minutes. I woke my wife saying "Wake up, we're being invaded." I was right. Troops from the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Poland had been ordered to occupy Czechoslovokia, their East European Bloc member state, to put an end to the Czechs' bid for some freedom. We stayed up the rest of the night listening to Radio Prague as it tried to warn the people. The next morning we were greeted with this scene from our Hotel Europa window:
Among troops of the Warsaw Pact that invaded Czechoslovakia were soldiers of the Polish Army. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was devastated by the German occupation Army and then the Soviets during all of World War II. It has since been largely restored. Here is an ERS SAR view of modern Warsaw, and then a SPOT view.
A sense of how modern most of Warsaw now appears is given in this wide-view (panoramic) camera photo (scroll right to see its full extent):
But the Poles were careful in rebuilding their city to maintain and restore the Old Town. This photo shows the Plac Zamkowy (a castle on a square).
To the northeast lie the Balkan States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, now independent countries after the demise of the Soviet Union. As typical of their cities here is Riga, capital of Latvia.
Another capital city, Tallinn, in Estonia appears in this Quickbird image:
Lithuania's capital is Vilnius:
East of Poland is Belarus, once known as White Russia. Its capital is Minsk:
Once part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became an independent country after the breakup of the Union in 1989. It is now the third largest country in Europe. Its capital is Kiev, a city of 3 million on the Dneiper River:
Kiev is a mix of the old and the new. As seen from the Botanical Gardens and the Vydubychi Monastery, many apartment buildings line the Dneiper. In the town itself are quaint old churches used in the Russian Orthodox faith.
We now swing northeastward to Moscow, the capital of Russia, revealed in this snow-covered (late February, 1974) scene because it is a "heat island" even in winter, so that the streets are mainly cleared. The many dark patches spread across the countryside are copses of evergreen forests, mixed with deciduous trees. Between them are open fields cleared for agriculture that includes rye and oats for food, flax for fabric, and feed for dairy cattle. This alternating interspersion of woods and farmlands must have proved daunting both to Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941 in their ill-fated winter attacks on Moscow. The large "river" north of Moscow is actually the 130 km (80 mile) long Moscow Canal, a manmade channel designed to connect the Volga headwaters with the Moskva River.
Let's zoom in on the city and its environs as imaged in Spring by Landsat-7s ETM+:
Inner Moscow has a pair of ring roadways much like in Vienna. Here it is in this GoggleEarth/Quickbird image:
The center of Moscow is the Kremlin Triangle, which includes Red Square, scene of massive military parades each October during the Soviet Era. Here is a view of that area. Here it is from space:
Next, an aerial view and then a ground shot of the Red Army marching through the parade grounds, with the St. Basil Orthodox cathedral in the background.
We now look closer at the scene found on the top of the Geography Quiz page in this Section. There, we saw St. Petersburg (to most older readers, once known as Leningrad) in its regional context. Now, we examine it close up as imaged by the Indian IRS-1 satellite:
The tie between St. Petersburg and the Neva River is shown in this aerial photo.
The most famed building in St. Petersburg is the Hermitage, once the Winter Palace of the Czars, and now one of the great fine arts museums in the world. Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian composer, wrote his famed 7th Symphony (my favorite of all his works), to commemorate the brave citizens of Leningrad who withstood numerous onslaughts by the German Army for nearly three years during the Second World War.
Another great Russian city is Volgograd, on the Volga River south of Moscow. In the 1940s, this city was named Stalingrad, after the Soviet head of state, Joseph Stalin. In the winter of 1942-43, this then industrial city was the focal point in what many consider the greatest battle (at least, the greatest urban battle) in history. As part of Operation Blau, Hitler had directed his German panzers into the Caucases to capture its oil fields. But he also sent an army to the Volga to capture his opponent's namesake. The Soviet Red Army decided to make a stand at this city. For more than 3 months, the German siege involved daily house-to-house fighting that leveled almost the entire city. But the Soviets heroically held until lack of food and ammunition forced the capitulation of the German 7th Army under Field Marshall von Paulus. The Germans lost almost 850000 troops ( killed, wounded captured; both German and satellite countries); the Soviets somewhat more. Most historians agree that the Battle of Stalingrad was the "turning point of the Second World War" that shifted its course towards eventual Allied victory. Some consider it the greatest battle in all of history. An excellent account of the Battle of Stalingrad is given in this Wikipedia website.
Two views from space put Stalingrad/Volgograd in its setting on the west side of the Volga River:
This battle involved many individual attacks (the story of snipers on both sides is told in the movie "Enemy at the Gates"). One of the most ferocious is known as the Battle of the Grainery. Remote sensing documented the battlefield there in this April 1943 aerial photo:
Photos taken during and just after Stalingrad reveal the near-total destruction of the city's infrastructure. Here are two examples:
In Russian history Stalingrad is a "holy place". As the city was being rebuilt, the Soviet leaders had a 88-meter high statue erected on Mamayev Kurgan (Hill) within the city. It symbolizes the bravery and sacrifices that all of the peoples of the Russian Federation applied to saving the motherland in (what they call) the Great Patriotic War.
In the Stalingrad discussion above, we mentioned that Adolph Hitler took his generals advice and approved of a push in summer 1942 (a year after invading the Soviet Union) into the Caucases region. The goal was to capture the Baku oil fields, which, if accomplished, would have deprived the Red Army of much of its fuel - and capacity to fight. If the Germans had been successful, it is likely that the Soviet nation would have been forced to capitulate within months for lack of fuel. This might well have ended World War II in Europe since the Allies would have faced a huge, seasoned Nazi Army. But the debacle at Stalingrad siphoned off vital troops that could otherwise have reached Baku and the Caspian Sea. The Caucasus were also a formidible natural barrier. The Panzers failed to approach Baku and in early 1943 had to withdraw - a move that heralded the general retreat of the Axis nations that ended in Berlin, and surrender, in May of 1945. This map covers the history of the campaign:
The Caucasus mountains, the only large range in European Russia, were formed about 25 million years ago when the Arabian plate slammed into the Eurasian plate. They are similar to the Alps in striking scenery. The region shown includes the Caucasus Mountains that include Chechnya and Georgia. Part of eastern Turkey (Armenia) is also included. Here are a space view and a ground photo:
The highest mountain in the Caucasus is Mt. Elbrus (4741 m [15554 ft]), seen here from space and from the ground:
Before leaving this page, we will arbitrarily settle a dilemma. Europe is surrounding by oceans on three sides. But to its east is land. Where does Europe end and Asia begin. In Russia, the Ural Mountains are arbitrarily specified as the boundary. But off Greece the line of demarcation is less obvious. Turkey can be thought of both as in Europe and in Asia. So, where to put its capital - Ankara - which lies in the center of the country. We will add it here with the 'proviso' that it technically is located in Asia Minor. However, Turkey is de facto a part of the NATO alliance and trades with the European Union.
The main landmark in Istanbul is St. Sofia, once a Christian Cathedral and now a Moslem mosque (renamed the Blue Mosque):
The capital of Turkey is Ankara, in the mountain interior, visualized in this astronaut photo taken in April of 2009. Note the prevalence of red tile roofs.
The dominant feature in eastern Turkey is Mt. Ararat, a stratocone which was discussed from a biblical/archaeological perspective on page 4-5. We show it again as a Landsat black and white image and then from the ground (it is 5137 m or 16854 ft high):
Europe, the center for western civilization for 2500 years, has been well worth our time spent on this pair of pages. But, on to the next page which covers parts of the world which in east-central Africa and Mesopotamia are truly the "cradle" of occidental (western) civilization.
