Cities from Above: 29 Aerial Views from Athens to Cape Town

Seen from a plane, a drone or a high ridge, a city stops being a maze of streets and becomes a pattern. Grids, rings, canals, harbours and hills suddenly make sense. These 29 aerial views run from the Acropolis of Athens to Barcelona's octagonal blocks, Manhattan's great green rectangle, Venice's lagoon, the pyramids of Giza and one of the longest hedge mazes in the world.

Athens, Barcelona and New York from above

Athens, Greece. The Acropolis is a limestone rock rising about 150 metres above sea level, and from the air its flat summit of roughly 3 hectares stands out clearly from the white sea of the modern city. The Parthenon was rebuilt under Pericles in the Golden Age of the fifth century BC, and the whole hill has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. No other view explains so quickly why Hellas built its most sacred temples on high ground. For another Greek landscape shaped by rock, see Meteora: Monasteries, Rock Pillars and the Art Inside.

Barcelona, Spain. The Eixample, Ildefons Cerdà's 19th-century expansion of the city, is built from square blocks with their corners cut off, so every intersection opens into a small octagonal plaza. The district holds Passeig de Gràcia, Gaudí's Casa Milà and Casa Batlló and the Sagrada Família, and about 266,000 people live there. The Eixample overview explains the plan in detail, and Rob Whitworth’s Barcelona film shows the same streets in motion.

New York City. Central Park covers 843 acres (341 hectares) and runs 2.5 miles north to south and half a mile across. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the 1858 design competition with their Greensward Plan, and the park was completed in 1876. Today it receives around 42 million visits a year. Our Central Park guide covers what to see on the ground.

City grids, towers and sprawl

Dubai. Few cities have grown so fast. The Google Earth view shows a desert city laid out along the coast of the Persian Gulf.

Paris. The photograph comes from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the French photographer famous for his aerial work. Paris shows its great boulevards and radiating avenues best from the air. Our guide to Ten Paris Sights and Experiences: A Flexible Plan with Time to Enjoy Them covers the city at street level.

Chicago. Its skyscrapers rise straight from the shore of Lake Michigan, and the street grid stretches inland as far as the eye can see.

Mexico City. Mexican photographer Pablo López Luz has photographed the capital's endless housing from the air, a view that shows the scale of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Americas.

Mogadishu and Orange County, Florida. Two very different settlements: the Somali capital on the Indian Ocean coast, and the Florida county around Orlando with its planned suburbs.

San Francisco. The city laid a rigid street grid over steep hills, which is why its streets climb so dramatically. From above, the grid looks flat and orderly.

Old towns, walls and the smallest state

Nördlingen, Germany. This Bavarian town sits inside the Nördlinger Ries, an impact crater about 25 km wide formed some 15 million years ago. Nördlingen is one of the few German towns with completely intact city walls, and the round shape of its old centre is obvious from above. The 90-metre tower of St George's Church, known as "Daniel", rises in the middle.

Bern, Switzerland. The Swiss capital's medieval Old City sits on a narrow peninsula inside a tight loop of the River Aare, a setting that is far easier to understand from the air.

Vatican City. The world's smallest sovereign state covers about 44 hectares and has fewer than 1,000 residents. It became independent under the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno and Bernini all worked on St Peter's Basilica, whose dome dominates the aerial view.

Turin, Italy. The regular street pattern of Turin's centre goes back to the Roman town, with the Alps on the horizon.

Moscow. Russia's capital spreads out in rings around the Kremlin, with the Moskva River winding through it.

Cities on the water

Sydney, Seattle, Vancouver, Shanghai and Amsterdam all grew around water: a deep natural harbour, a sound, an inlet, a river and a ring of 17th-century canals. Amsterdam's canal ring, dug in the Dutch Golden Age, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For more Australia, read Ten Australian Travel Ideas: Choose a Region, Then Give It Time.

Venice, Italy. The city stands on more than 100 small islands in a shallow lagoon of about 550 square kilometres, linked by some 400 bridges over 177 canals. Venice and its Lagoon became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Cape Town, South Africa. Table Mountain's flat top, about 3 km across, rises to 1,086 metres at Maclear's Beacon, with Lion's Head on one side and Devil's Peak on the other. The cableway has carried visitors up since 1929, and Table Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in South Africa.

Landscapes, islands and monuments from the air

Reinebringen, Norway. This 448-metre peak rises above the fishing village of Reine on Moskenesøya in the Lofoten Islands, well north of the Arctic Circle. A stone staircase built between 2016 and 2019 replaced the old steep, muddy trail, and the view of Reine from the top appears on countless brochures.

Bắc Sơn Valley, Vietnam. In Bắc Sơn district of Lạng Sơn Province, in the far north-east of Vietnam, rice plots fill the valley floor in a patchwork of greens.

Spoorbuurt, North Holland. In spring the Dutch bulb fields turn into stripes of red, yellow and pink, bordered by canals and wind turbines.

The Maldives. The Indian Ocean nation is made up of coral islands and atolls, many of them small enough to see in a single frame.

Giza, Egypt. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still standing.

Longleat, England. The hedge maze at Longleat in Wiltshire uses more than 16,000 English yews and has 2.72 km (1.69 miles) of paths. It was laid out by maze designer Greg Bright in the grounds of an Elizabethan house built between 1568 and 1580, now also home to Britain's first drive-through safari park, opened in 1966.

Niagara Falls. The falls straddle the border between Canada and the United States, and from above the horseshoe-shaped curve of the Canadian side is easy to make out. For more places best seen on foot, try our remarkable-street guide and the ancient-landmark planning guide.

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