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 or our forum.

Then and now

From OpenHistoricalMap's community projects:

Left: The Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1867. Right: The same location today.

On this day

Selected establishments and disestablishments on September 15:

1783: Reading is incorporated as a borough in Pennsylvania.
1862: During the American Civil War, Confederate General Robert E. Lee establishes his field headquarters for the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
1869: Meisenheim district is established in Prussia.
1896: The short-lived Greater Republic of Central America is established after El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua ratify the Treaty of Amapala.
1943: Jackson Hole National Monument is established in Wyoming.
1996: The Nanjing–Shanghai Expressway opens to traffic.

Statistics

2M
dated elements
504k
buildings
360k
railroad miles
125
average age
1938
average year
1,795
contributors

Source: Overpass API, Overpass API, Planet
September 1, 2025

Historical statistics

News

August 11, 2025: Vespucci adds built-in support for editing OpenHistoricalMap.
April 27, 2025: OSM Building Viewer adds support for rendering an OHM building in 3D.
April 17, 2025: OpenRailwayMap has added a time slider and replaced OpenStreetMap demolished railways with OpenHistoricalMap data.
April 15, 2025: Follow our new Bluesky account.
April 10, 2025: The Nominatim API has moved to a new subdomain for consistency with OpenStreetMap.

Older news

Events

November 14, 2025 – November 15, 2025: State of the Map Europe in Dundee, Scotland
November 12, 2025 – November 13, 2025: Unicode Technology Workshop in Mountain View, California
October 16, 2025 – October 19, 2025: WikiConference North America in New York City
October 15, 2025 – October 18, 2025: North American Cartographic Information Society Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky
October 3, 2025 – October 5, 2025: State of the Map in Manila