Key:capital
 capital
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| Description |
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The capital of a country or administrative divisions within countries 
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| Rendering in OSM Carto |
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| Group: Places |
| Used on these elements |
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| Documented values: 4 |
| Useful combination |
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| See also |
Status: de facto
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| Tools for this tag |
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This property is used on place=city/town (and other place=* of type settlement) to tag the 
capital of a country or administrative divisions within countries.
How to map
- capital=yes - capital of a country
- capital=<admin_level-number> for subdivisions of countries - see boundary=administrative
- e.g. capital=4 - capital of a state/province/...
Capitals not tagged as city or town
Not all country capitals fit into the definition of place=city/town because of size or of definition. Please join discussion on Talk page about tagging.
- Ngerulmud - place=village 4244310289
4244310289 - This government complex is located 2 km from the center of the town of Melekeok, population 271. The largest town and former capital of Palau is 20 km away in Koror City, population ~11,200.
- Funafuti - place=municipality 3376265049 3376265049 and also place=atoll on 447736425
447736425 - The whole atoll is designated the capital, and currently this is mapped as a municipality rather than a specific settlement
- Vatican City - place=suburb 424311883 424311883
- Since it it's a part of Rome and depending on it.
Retrieving capitals from boundary relations
Relations of type=boundary+boundary=administrative include the role 
admin_centre. The role members can used to get the capitals of countries (admin_level=2 on relation) and other capitals depending admin_level=* on relation.
The following Overpass API query (link) gets all national admin_centres of the world:
relation["admin_level"="2"]["type"="boundary"]["boundary"="administrative"]; node(r:"admin_centre"); out meta;
The following Overpass API query (link) gets all admin_level=4 admin_centres of Germany. The country and admin_level can be adjusted.
{{geocodeArea:Germany}}->.searchArea;
relation["admin_level"="4"]["type"="boundary"]["boundary"="administrative"];
node(r:"admin_centre");
node._(area.searchArea);
out meta;
As of 2016 the admin_centre role can't be used in databases created by osm2pgsql: We do not have this information in the database. osm2pgsql does not have membership information and nodes as relation members do not make it into geometries.
See also
- Proposed features/capital
- Tagging mailing list discussion October 2016
- Tagging mailing lists discussions in 2014: