London may have changed just a tiny bit since the 17th century, but you’d hardly know it looking at some of these mash-ups of classic paintings superimposed against modern scenery snapped by Google.
Londoner ‘Shystone‘ created a series of images matching up famous paintings of locations around the city with Google Street View images, with various elements of the two occasionally blending together.
The paintings often appear to be actual three-dimensional objects in the photos – oversized canvases blocking the roads or propped against light poles. Vans seem to come precariously close to smashing through the canvas in some shots. Modern tourists look out onto the Thames River as it was in 1746.
In one case, a long-demolished building is temporarily resurrected; a three-story townhouse stood on the South end of Trafalgar Square from 1605 through 1874.
As a Londoner, Shystone offers up some interesting tidbits about the city’s history, including how the locations shown tie into classic literature like Vanity Fair or Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.
