“When they die, Oscar Wilde wrote, all good Americans go to Paris. Some of us have always tried to get there early and beat the crowds.”
– From ‘Paris to the Moon’ by Adam Gopnik
click here to view site
For those who haven’t been to Paris and are primarily interested in ‘seeing’ the city, Eric Rougier’s FromParis.com blog-style site is a good place to begin one’s panoramic journey. The site contains scores of panoramas and images, along with free screensavers and wallpaper and a couple good tutorials (in English and French) on creating panoramas and a do-it-yourself VR head.
Panoramas of all Parisian most well known locations are included here, such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Orsay Museum and the Louvre, and the viewing options are plentiful: large view, zoom inside, QuickTime VR medium, large and fullscreen. Some of the panos are additionally offered in Java medium, large and fullscreen.
I appreciated the simple, interactive map of Paris where the dots represent either a virtual tour (a series of linked panoramas) or a single panorama. It’s nice to get a geographical orientation of the city, and where well-known monuments are located in respect to each other, before actually viewing them. There’s some interesting textual information about the history of Paris at the bottom of the page.
The site’s highlights are the three virtual tours. The tour of the Eiffel Tower, with 20 panoramas includes a unique one taken above the tower from a hot air balloon, where the city is seen from a rare vantage point. There are also views of the Tower from Trocadero gardens, the skating rink and the west pillar.
The virtual tour of Notre Dame contains three sections of VRs: surroundings, inside the Cathedral, and the front and towers, in total 23 panos, handily placed atop floor plans and sketches of the church so you know exactly where each pano is physically located. View panos from behind the choir, the nave, close ups of the frescos and outside views of the cathedral from all angles.
My personal favorite, the virtual tour of the lovely Sainte Chapelle on the Isle de Paris, contains eight panos taken inside and around the historic church.
Other notable panos: Diana’s Flame, Alma, the Defense area captured during a storm, and a beautiful one of Sacre Coeur Church.
Eric Rougier is a Paris-based photographer and this site is a labor of love, “shooting the wonderful sights and lights of Paris has always been my passion,” he says. Rougier is a member of Sipa Press, Burda and Hachette Flipacchi and also designs image databases, administers networks and systems, managing to work in two areas he loves, photography and IT.
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Rougier conveniently arranges all 61 of his QTVRs into pages where they’re shown as panoramic images and can also be viewed as panoramas.
Recommended Reading: Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik
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