I spent an hour or two last weekend ploughing through a perfectly respectable introduction from Time Out's admirable guide to Istanbul. Why Time Out? Because the colour photography and the short features make it much less formidable than, say, Fodor's, Lonely Planet or a Blue Guide - though if Cadogan had published an Istanbul guide, I would have picked it for the quality of the writing. It's not easy to find good prose and striking photography among the morass of brochurese and stock pictures on the web. Here's a guide to some of the best.
The Lightbox
The Lightbox is an ongoing project by Simon Kirwan, who emails regularly to tell me about his latest batch of photographs. They always merit a visit. He is particularly keen on the Lake District, Snowdonia, Merseyside, Antrim and Down counties in Ireland, Nepal, Tanzania, France and Spain, but there is much else of interest here.
Tour Egypt
Patchy and occasionally rather peculiar, but full of unusual sketches, paintings and photos. There are other treasures, too, including a guide to hailing cabs in Cairo ("At the sight of an approaching taxi point one hand towards the road. The taxi driver will slowly cruise past you. As he does, yell out a district or landmark near your destination.")
A Gazetteer of Italy
An abundance of photographs and an annotated version of Tobias Smollett's Travels in France and Italy. ("The Pantheon: a gloomy, ugly building in which it rains.")
Al Mashriq
Thousands of photographs - historical and contemporary - and pictures, letters, articles and reviews of places in the eastern Mediterranean. Completely impractical, and the closest thing to a coffee table book that the web can offer.
Ostia, Harbour of Ancient Rome
If you're visiting Rome for more than a couple of days, a trip to the Roman town of Ostia and a picnic there are highly recommended. Find out why Pliny the Younger liked it so much.
Travel Intelligence
Excellent writing by Vitali Vitaliev, William Dalrymple and other well-known authors. You can search for articles by country.
Castle Wales
Succeeds in bringing frequently obscure Welsh ruins to life.
Classical Backpacking in Ancient Greece
Read what early travellers and the author of this site think of ancient Greek sites. ("You'd regret it if you got this far and didn't make it to the top. There are no guards or fees here, just a lot of goat droppings.")
The Catskill Archive
The Catskill mountains are in upstate New York. Read the Round the Bend guide (The Catskill Archive) in conjunction with the historical archive.
Great Buildings
Three-dimensional computer models of famous buildings. (A program called DesignWorkshop Lite is required. It can be downloaded free).
The Guardian's archive
Finally, did you know that you can search the Guardian and Observer's archive of travel articles for the piece you threw away a few months ago?
