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…

Use

Go to the main map and navigate to a place and time of interest using the time slider. Share the map to spread the word about our project. Explore the many ways you can reuse OpenHistoricalMap in your own storytelling and software projects.

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. Please report any issues and send us your ideas on GitHub or our forum.

Then and now

From OpenHistoricalMap's community projects:

Left: The 1964–65 World’s Fair in Queens, New York City. Right: The same location today.

On this day

Selected establishments and disestablishments on October 1:

1540: The Spanish Empire seizes Alboran from the Ottoman Empire.
1777: Santa Catarina Island is returned by Spain to Portugal after the Treaty of San Ildefonso.
1927: Pakil is separated from Pangil in the Philippines to become a separate municipality again.
1958: Authority over Christmas Island is transferred by the United Kingdom from Singapore to Australia.
1964: Tōkaidō Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed rail line, begins service, connecting the cities of Tokyo and Osaka.
2019: The Alaska Marine Highway System ferry connecting Prince Rupert, British Columbia and Ketchikan, Alaska ends.

Statistics

7.5M
dated elements
2,411k
buildings
629k
railroad miles
50
average age
1992
average year
2,246
contributors

Source: QLever, Planet
September 22, 2026

Historical statistics

News

September 22, 2026: Database statistics are now calculated using QLever.
July 23, 2026: You can make advanced edits right inside your Web browser using Level0.
July 10, 2026: You can filter search results by the city, region, and country.
April 16, 2026: The official vector tilesets are now available as TileJSON.
April 15, 2026: Our tagging pages more consistently link to other OHM tagging pages instead of often conflicting OSM tagging pages.

Older news

Events

October 27, 2026 – October 29, 2026: State of the Map LatAm in Mexico City
November 2, 2026 – November 4, 2026: FOSS4G North America in Sacramento, California
November 10, 2026: Sand Lake Historical Society meeting in Sand Lake, New York