About Jahresringe
Every building standing in Berlin today, of them, coloured by when it was built. Berlin publishes no year for each building, so each takes the best of several open sources, and every date says where it came from. Jahresringe is German for tree rings: Berlin grew in rings.
How a building gets its year
The sources are tried in turn, from exact years to estimates. A building takes the first that dates it.
| Source | Buildings |
|---|
Only buildings (%) have an exact year, mostly landmarks and listed buildings. The rest are estimates and read as such: a period or a decade ("1950s, estimated"), with a year only where the aerial photos give one within a few years ("c. 2014"). Weak estimates, from the type of city block or from the neighbouring buildings, are greyed on the map. Of the buildings dated by their neighbours, are garages and sheds under 50 m², drawn in one neutral tone.
The 2022 census counts buildings by construction period in every 100 m square but does not say which is which; the homes of each 1 km square share out its counts, guided by the 1992/93 map, the aerial photos and each building's form. The 1992/93 building-age map and the 2016 survey cover the inner city and residential blocks.
How good the estimates are
To test the estimates, the buildings with an exact year were dated again as if they had none. % landed in the right period, a median of years off:
| Estimated from | Buildings | Right period | Median years off |
|---|
These buildings are mostly landmarks and listed buildings, not typical homes, so the figures say more about old and notable buildings than about the average house.
Fifty famous buildings were checked by hand: all show the right period ( without the years checked against Wikipedia, kept in the code with a quote from each article). The estimated homes add up, per district and period, to the census totals: of within the census's own blurring.
Where the data is thin
- OpenStreetMap's building years are not in this version: its servers could not be reached from where the map was built.
- The 1992/93 map and the 1945 survey cover the inner city only.
- Heights come from Berlin's 3D city model, measured from the lowest ground point to the highest roof point; it can leave out a spire or a dome, or a tower built since. Where Wikidata gives a building's height ( buildings), the panel shows that instead. Of the fifty famous buildings, have a height on Wikipedia or Wikidata; the model is more than a tenth lower for and higher for .
- Noise is measured at homes only ( of them): the loudest facade, by day, evening and night, from the strategic noise map of 2022.
The divided city and 1945
The Wall, the death strip and the political border are Berlin's map of the Wall in 1989 ( km of border wall). West Berlin is the area they enclose: km², against km² on Wikipedia. The sectors follow the districts as they were before 2001. West Staaken, west of the Wall, belonged to East Germany until 1990 and counts as East; the exclave Steinstücken counts as West, as does the land East Berlin gave to West Berlin in 1988. buildings stand where the death strip ran. of named places were checked.
The sectors' areas in the legend are measured on today's Berlin. The Soviet sector there is everything outside West Berlin's outline, km²: km² of it is West Staaken and km² thin slivers along the Wall in the western districts; the remaining km² compare with the km² Wikipedia gives for East Berlin.
The survey of 1945 marks groups of buildings in the inner city as destroyed or damaged. Each building standing today takes the mark of most of its footprint: of the buildings in the survey, stand on sites marked destroyed and damaged. For % the mark is the same as the map's at the building's centre.
Every caption of the story is checked against the Wikipedia articles it names, which the caption links.
What leaves this site
The map loads only its own files. Two things come from elsewhere, and only when you ask for them: a building's photo, from Wikimedia Commons, when you open its panel ( buildings have one); and the aerial photo, from Geoportal Berlin, when you switch it on. Links to Wikipedia and Wikidata open those sites. There are no analytics, no cookies and no tracking.
Using the map with a keyboard
Tab moves between the search box, the buttons, the legend and the timeline. The arrow keys move the map, with Shift they turn it; the + and - keys zoom. On the timeline the arrow keys change the year, Page Up and Page Down by ten years. Search opens any building's panel; Escape closes it and skips the story. The map follows your system's setting for reduced motion: flights become cuts.
Sources and licences
- Geoportal Berlin, Data licence Germany, Zero, version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2.0): the 3D building model (LoD2); ALKIS buildings, districts and localities; the address list (Wohnlagen 2026); the street network (Detailnetz); the Umweltatlas city structure 2024, building-age survey of residential blocks, building and vegetation heights 2009/2010 and strategic noise map 2022; the building-age map 1992/93; the aerial photos since 2009; the map of the Berlin Wall; the blocks and districts of 1990 (ISU50); the building damage map of 1945.
- Zensus 2022, © Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder, Data licence Germany, Attribution, version 2.0 (dl-de/by-2.0): buildings by construction period per grid square.
- Wikidata (CC0): years, heights, article titles and images of notable buildings.
- OpenHistoricalMap contributors (CC0): construction years of buildings, many of them drawn from Geoportal Berlin / Berlin um 1900 (AISBer) under dl-de/by-2.0.
- Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0): the introductions in the panel, credited under each, and the facts of the story's captions, linked.
- Wikimedia Commons: the panel photos, each credited with its author and licence.
Code and credits
Made by Anubhav Das. The code is MIT licensed. Its tile format, the tile worker and parts of the shader, picking and timeline are adapted from Alex Barakov's LAYRS: Amsterdam (MIT). The idea owes much to Alexander Bogachev's Paris, building by building; none of its code is used. Drawn with three.js (MIT); set in Fraunces and JetBrains Mono (SIL Open Font License 1.1).