Proposal:Historic=ceremonial gate

Ceremonial Gate
Proposal status:	Proposed (under way)
Proposed by:	Daishu10000
Tagging:	historic=ceremonial_gate
Statistics:
Draft started:	2025-05-29
RFC start:	2025-05-29

Proposal

Introduce a new value for the key `historic=*`: `historic=ceremonial_gate`, to represent traditional symbolic gates in East Asian cultural regions. These include:

• **Chinese paifang (牌坊)** / **pailou (牌楼)**
• **Japanese torii (鳥居)**
• **Korean hongsalmun (紅箭門)** / **iljumun (一柱門)**
• **Vietnamese tam quan (三關門)**

Rationale

Many historical and symbolic gates in East Asia serve ceremonial, cultural, and often religious functions. These structures typically mark a transition between secular and sacred spaces, commemorate individuals or events, or symbolize virtues.

They are:

• Not ordinary access-control gates (`barrier=gate`)
• Not generic monuments (`historic=monument`)
• Not always suitable under `man_made=*` due to cultural and historical significance

Currently, these structures are inconsistently tagged:

• `man_made=paifang` (600+ uses)
• `man_made=pailou` (7 uses)
• `man_made=torii` (10,000+ uses)
• `man_made=hongsalmun` (37 uses)
• `man_made=iljumun` (5 uses)

This proposal aims to standardize their tagging under a common, culturally sensitive and historically appropriate value.

Tagging

• `historic=ceremonial_gate`
• Recommended:

 * `ceremonial_gate:type=*` — to specify local tradition or style:
   * `ceremonial_gate:type=paifang` (China)
   * `ceremonial_gate:type=torii` (Japan)
   * `ceremonial_gate:type=hongsalmun` (Korea)
   * `ceremonial_gate:type=tam_quan` (Vietnam)
 * `name=*`
 * `religion=*` (if applicable)
 * `material=*` (e.g., stone, wood)
 * `heritage=*` or `heritage:operator=*`

Rendering

Rendering suggestions may be considered by cartographic projects such as openstreetmap-carto, potentially with unique symbols for different `ceremonial_gate:type=*`.

See also

• Tag:historic=monument
• Tag:man_made=torii
• Tag:man_made=paifang
• Tag:man_made=hongsalmun
• Tag:man_made=iljumun

Discussion

Please use the talk page.

(The preliminary discussions are taking place in the official community (here).)