Budget Travel recently put in a request to Cornell University (are esteemed academic institutions usually at the beck and call of travel magazines?) to analzye Flickr’s more than 35 million photographs to figure out where the most photographed places on Earth are, and this was their results, ranked by city and most photographed landmark:

1) New York City (Empire Sate Building)

2) London (Trafalgar Square)

3) San Francisco (Union Square)

4) Paris (Eiffel Tower)

5) Los Angeles (Hollywood Walk of Fame)

6) Chicago (Cloud Gate Sculpture)

7) Washington, D.C. (Lincoln Memorial)

8) Seattle (Space Needle)

9) Rome (Colosseum)

10) Amsterdam (Dam Square)

Not too many surprises here, however, given that this analysis was based upon Flickr photos, one has to think this is probably a very U.S.-centric pool to test, and this likely accounts for such tech-heavy cities such as Seattle and San Francisco ranking so highly (are people really photographing Seattle more than Rome?).

[Budget Travel]

Posted on June 07, 2011 by Matt Stabile