~ Incredible Aerial Views of Cities of the World ~

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Known to the locals as 'Hill 3' this knoll jutting above Mumbai's northern slums is no more valuable than the land below. 

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Access to running water, which the hill lacks, is far more valuable than any view.

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Kolkata's glittering memorial to Queen Victoria; in the foreground is a statue of King Edward VII, who died before the monument to his mother was completed.

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Ama Masjid, the heart of Islam in India. The red sandstone structure was built under the orders of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who also commissioned the Taj Mahal. 

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Two wrestlers practicing the ancient Indian sport of Kushti in a pit they had hacked into the ground two hours before.

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The Taj Mahal, with the Yamuna River snaking away towards its source in the Himalayas. 

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The Taj Mahal as the day's first tourists trickle through the gates.

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The Lotus Temple, dotted with pigeons at sunrise. Designed by an Iranian exile, the building serves as the center of the Baha'i faith in Delhi. 

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RUSSIA



The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood during a squally autumn morning. The church marks the spot where the reformist Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb-rolling revolutionary.

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The Hermitage Pavilion wreathed in dawn mist. The little "whipped cream" pavilion was an example of the decadence which would eventually topple the Tsarist autocracy. It was famous for parties where tables laden with food would rise from beneath the floorboards into groups of delighted guests.

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The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built only as an epitaph to the murdered Tsar and wasn't intended for public worship. A patch of the cobbled street on which the Tsar lay mortally wounded is preserved within the old church, now open to the public as a museum.

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Visitors walk on fallen leaves in the Summer Garden, central St. Petersburg's oldest Park.

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The angel atop the Alexander column. Built after Russia's victory over Napoleon, the column's 600 ton granite trunk was tipped into place by 2,000 soldiers.

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The Peter & Paul Fortress, Saint Petersburg's founding point, juts out into the frozen River Neva. At the time of the fort's construction, the islands of the Neva were populated only by a ragtag collection of fishermen's huts. It was deemed "too wild, too wet, too unhealthy" for human habitation, the equivalent of founding a capital city in the upper reaches of Hudson Bay.

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Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral in Peterhof, the palace and gardens in the background. Beyond, the Finnish Gulf is obscured by fog. During World War II, German armies occupied Peterhof, destroying it almost entirely on their retreat.