Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Walk the Great Wall of China in Google’s latest virtual tour

If your pandemic-related precautions still prevent you from traveling but you’d like to take a trip somewhere far away, then how about diving into the latest virtual tour from Google Arts & Culture?

The Street View-style experience features a 360-degree virtual tour of one of the best-preserved sections of the Great Wall, which in its entirety stretches for more than 13,000 miles — about the round-trip distance between Los Angeles and New Zealand.

The Great Wall of China.
A section of China’s Great Wall. Google Arts & Culture

The new virtual tour includes 370 high-quality images of the Great Wall, together with 35 stories offering an array of architectural details about the world-famous structure.

Recommended Videos

“It’s a chance for people to experience parts of the Great Wall that might otherwise be hard to access, learn more about its rich history, and understand how it’s being preserved for future generations,” Google’s Pierre Caessa wrote in a blog post announcing the new content.

The wall was used to defend against various invaders through the ages and took more than 2,000 years to build. The structure is often described as “the largest man-made project in the world.”

But climate conditions and human activities have seen a third of the UNESCO World Heritage site gradually crumble away, though many sections of the wall are now being restored so that it can be enjoyed and appreciated for years to come.

Google Arts & Culture has been steadily adding to its library of virtual tours, which can be enjoyed on mobile and desktop devices. The collection includes The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks and an immersive exploration of some of the world’s most remote and historically significant places.

If you’re looking for more content along the same lines, then check out these virtual-tour apps that transport you to special locations around the world, and even to outer space.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA astronauts keep quiet about medical issue returning from ISS
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pictured left to right, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps.

Three NASA astronauts who recently returned from the International Space Station (ISS) have said that they are in good health but have declined to discuss the medical issue that required them to be diverted to a hospital following their return to Earth. The astronauts, who were part of the Crew-8 mission, landed on October 25 and were taken for routine medical checkups, after which the crew was taken to the Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital for further evaluations, and one member was hospitalized.

NASA has not shared which of the crew, which included Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin as well as NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps, was hospitalized or why. However, the agency did state that the reentry and splashdown process of their spacecraft was normal and that the affected crew member was released from the hospital the next day in good health.

Read more
Planetary defense mission Hera blasts off toward Mars
Hera will perform a swingby of Mars in March 2025 as a way of gathering extra momentum on its way to the Didymos binary asteroid system. The spacecraft will fly within the orbits of both Martian moons Deimos and Phobos, and perform science observations of the former body and the planet's surface, in synergy with the UAE's Hope orbiter and gathering preparatory data for JAXA-DLR's MMX Martian Moons eXploration mission due to be launched in 2026.

The European Space Agency (ESA)'s planetary defense mission, Hera, has completed the first major maneuver of its journey following its launch in October. The spacecraft has burned its thrusters to put it on a course toward Mars, which it should reach to perform a gravity assist flyby in 2025.

The mission is a follow-up to NASA's DART mission, which deliberately crashed into an asteroid in 2022. DART was testing to see whether impacting a spacecraft into an asteroid could alter its trajectory, which it succeeded in doing. The idea is that if an asteroid should ever threaten Earth, space agencies could send a spacecraft to crash into it and knock it off course.

Read more
Andor season 2 is coming sooner than a lot of Star Wars fans thought
Cassian stands by a hillside in Andor season 1.

It looks like Lucasfilm may have accidentally revealed the long-awaited premiere date for Andor season 2, and on the Disney+ mobile app, no less. Early Saturday morning, some eagle-eyed users noticed a new date attached to the bottom of the app's Andor streaming tile. The date in question promises that Andor season 2 is coming April 22, 2025.

It isn't just possible but likely that this Disney+ update was made earlier than Lucasfilm planned. Not only was it added to the streaming service's mobile app with no accompanying announcement or comment from Lucasfilm, but Disney is also in the midst of hosting its D23 Brazil convention this weekend. The event has already given fans their first look at Diego Luna's Cassian Andor in Andor season 2, and it's possible that the show's return date was being saved for D23 Brazil as well.

Read more