Key:capital

capital
Description
The capital of a country or administrative divisions within countries
Rendering in OSM Carto
Group: places
Used on these elements
Documented values: 4
Useful combination
place=*
See also
population=*
Status: de facto
capital=* More details at taginfo
Tools for this tag
taginfo · AD · AT · BR · BY · CH · CN · CZ · DE · DK · FI · FR · GB · GR · HU · IN · IR · IT · LI · LU · JP · KP · KR · NL · PL · PT · RU · ES · AR · MX · CO · BO · CL · EC · PY · PE · UY · VE · TW · UA · US · VN overpass-turbo OSM Tag History

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.

capital_city=*

More details at taginfo

• capital_city=*

If you know places with this tag, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
Automated edits are strongly discouraged unless you really know what you are doing!

See also

• Proposed features/capital
• Tagging mailing list discussion October 2016
• Tagging mailing lists discussions in 2014:
  • [1]
  • [2]

External links

Maps where capitals are clearly visible:

• tile.openstreetmap.fr