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Working on map of European Architecture and History

I've been to Europe quite a few times in the past via a Eurrail pass and enjoyed it quite a bit. Since then I regularly geek out on Youtube Channels and Wikipedia doing research. Here is link to a google mymap of my research results that I thought I should share.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/view?mid=1rKwkUNQwzgs1Pf5u0135skn1PLVMfwsH&ll=45.59949641040512%2C8.662175115247294&z=6

note there are layers for each history period that can be toggled by accessing the legend button in upper left.

Posted by
6807 posts

Awesome! I go down rabbit holes like this, too (make my own custom maps for trips), but this is even more ambitious, you really have your work cut out for you! But labors of love like this are great. Obviously, the amount of stuff you could potentially include is essentially infinite. Hope you have a lot of spare time for this!

Don't forget to step back once in a while, switch off the computer, and let your eyes recover from the strain of intensely peering at all the details for hours (something I have had to learn to do repeatedly lest my eyesight suffers).

I will be cross-referencing a small corner of your map for my next trip(s). Kudos and thanks for sharing.

Posted by
4625 posts

Wow what a great resource! Thanks for sharing.

Posted by
7043 posts

That is a very impressive map, well done! How many hours have you spent on it?

Although there are many things missing in northern Europe, there is a lot more to see in the Nordics. And I did spot a few mistakes.

Posted by
2 posts

I do have some light criteria for inclusion in the map. it needs to have a wikipedia article to link to and there needs to be something interesting that was there other than a retaining wall or something, although if the retaining wall is all thats left of something that was really impressive at the time than i will include it. Generally any UNESCO site gets included except the food and culture oriented ones not because I don't think they are important its just that the Google My maps as is just can't handle that variety of info and keep it decently organized.

if you see something missing or wrong and its one of your favorite places I will go ahead and add if theres a wikipedia article.

I probably have a thousand hrs or so in it at this point. I do most of the work in the winter when there's not much to do outside. Its not particularily tedious given how much I rely on wikipedia to do the heavy lifting. It has taken some time to figure out how to use the limited tools within Google Maps like icons, colors, layers to fit what I want but I think i got things pretty well squeezed in there and I'm kinda glad Google my Maps is limited so I can't really change my mind anymore.

this winter I'm looking at working on the maps boundries for each layer. pretty much i just watch Youtube videos and then link to sources on wikipedia. One smaller task I'm looking at is to move all the National Musuems to the PreClassical era because most countries put their oldest archelogical findings there and often have some illustrations and other info about those civilizations.

I'm not trying to have an exhaustive resource of European History, right now there is about 8000 places listed, I figure in the end it will be 12k to 15k although for cities I'd like to mostly mark neighborhoods on the map with links to important individual buildings.

Posted by
7043 posts

A few errors I've spotted: Uppsala cathedral was opened in 1435, two figures got mixed up. And I would not date Helsinki central station to 1862, while the station first opened in 1869 the current building is from 1919.

And some places in Sweden you might want to consider adding to the map: