OpenHistoricalMap

OpenHistoricalMap goes beyond the present, mapping places throughout the world… throughout the ages.
No community is too small, no story too obscure to add to this map.
Everyone has something to contribute, including you!

Go to the map • Learn more…

Contribute

To contribute to OpenHistoricalMap, go to the main map, zoom in to a place of interest, and click the "Edit" button. If you are familiar with editing OpenStreetMap, the OpenHistoricalMap editing experience is very similar. See the tagging guidelines for information on a few changes we've made to accommodate the time dimension.

We also maintain several software projects to facilitate map contributions and data reuse. Please report any issues and send us your ideas on GitHub.

Then and now

From OpenHistoricalMap's community projects:

Left: The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Right: The same location today.

On this day

Selected establishments and disestablishments on May 5:

1866: Portions of Arizona Territory and Utah Territory are transferred to Nevada.
1873: The Midland Grand Hotel opens in London.
1922: Sai Kung Road and several other streets are named in the New Kowloon Island section of Hong Kong.
1928: Portions of the São Paulo–Rio road open to traffic in Brazil.
1945: Denmark is liberated from German military occupation at the end of World War II.
1961: The Yeongdong Line opens between Donghae and Okgye.
2020: The Long-Term Parking station opens along the AirTrain lines at San Francisco International Airport.

Statistics

1.1M
dated elements
371k
buildings
222k
railroad miles
127
average age
1930
average year
1,402
contributors

Source: Overpass API, Overpass API, Planet
May 1, 2024

Historical statistics

News

May 2, 2024: The site will be in read-only mode for a few hours on Thursday to upgrade the database. You will not be able to edit the map during this time.
April 13, 2024: QLever now updates daily with the latest OpenHistoricalMap planet data.
April 10, 2024: In iD, you can now switch the background layer to Esri World Imagery Wayback layers captured on a variety of dates within the last decade.
February 13, 2024: An experimental new Railway style is now available in the Layer sidebar.
January 17, 2024: The University of Freiburg has set up QLever for querying OpenHistoricalMap data in conjunction with other datasets using SPARQL.