Key:capital

Description
The capital of a country or administrative divisions within countries Show/edit corresponding data item.
Rendering in OSM Carto
Group: places
Used on these elements
may be used on nodesshould not be used on waysmay be used on areas (and multipolygon relations)should not be used on relations (except multipolygon relations)
Documented values: 4
Useful combination
See also
Status: de factoPage for proposal
More details at taginfo
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

  • =yes - capital of a country
  • =<admin_level-number> for subdivisions of countries - see boundary=administrative
    • e.g. =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.

[W] Ngerulmud - place=village node 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.
[W] Funafuti - place=municipality node 3376265049 and also place=atoll on way 447736425
The whole atoll is designated the capital, and currently this is mapped as a municipality rather than a specific settlement
[W] Vatican City - place=suburb node 424311883
Since it it's a part of Rome and depending on it.

Retrieving capitals from boundary relations

relation Relations of type=boundary+boundary=administrative include the role 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.

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

External links

Maps where capitals are clearly visible:

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