From today's Gruaniad:

The Guardian: Interactive 1616 v 2016

"What a difference 400 years makes: the London skyline 1616 v 2016. Inspired by Claes Visscher's classic engraving of London half a century before the Great Fire, Robin Reynolds has updated the view to the present day"

Visscher Redrawn at the London's Guildhall art gallery.

.... although the persectives as shown in the Guardian are not exactly the same: the old medieval St Paul's was big but even with the medieval spire it was not that much bigger than Wren's cathedral.

A complete and satisfyingly large online version of Visscher's panorama is available on author Holly West's blog site, and as this is World Book Day I suppose now is as good a time as any to plug Ms West's "Isabel, Lady Wilde" murder mysteries featuring a late 17th century sleuth who dabbles in fortune telling and royal mistressing when she's not tracking down a villain or two.



Wenceslaus Hollar's panorama from almost the same perspective from 1647 is much better, but the image is jealously guarded by its owners the British Museum so online one tends only to find excerpts and snippets from it. However so popular was it even in its day that Hollar was asked back almost two decades later to portray the poor city after its devastating 1666 fire in a "then and now" montage. It's not a patch on his earlier one for detail but a fascinating depiction all the same: