Key: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 |
|
See also |
Status: de facto![]() |
Tools for this tag |
|
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 - seeboundary=administrative
- e.g.
capital=4
- capital of a state/province/...
- e.g.
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
42443102894244310289
- 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
33762650493376265049 and also
place=atoll
on 447736425447736425
- The whole atoll is designated the capital, and currently this is mapped as a municipality rather than a specific settlement
Vatican City -
place=suburb
424311883424311883
- 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
. The role members can used to get the capitals of countries ( admin_centre
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:
External links
Maps where capitals are clearly visible: