Maphattan

Open 3D buildings, roofs included

Mapping agencies across Europe publish the true 3D shape of over 80 million buildings, free to use. Each does it in its own portal, format and coordinate system. Maphattan is a plan to gather them into one open dataset.

See the sourcesSee the coverage
3D building models of central Regensburg, with red roofs on grey walls.
Regensburg · Bayern
3D building models of central Bern, with red roofs on grey walls.
Bern · swisstopo
3D building models of central Luxembourg, with red roofs on grey walls.
Luxembourg · ACT Luxembourg
3D building models of central Amsterdam, with red roofs on grey walls.
Amsterdam · 3DBAG
3D building models of central Warsaw, with red roofs on grey walls.
Warsaw · GUGiK
3D building models of central Lübeck, with red roofs on grey walls.
Lübeck · Schleswig-Holstein

One downloaded tile from each of six sources, drawn the same way. Red surfaces are roofs, grey ones are walls.

buildings with official 3D models
80 M+
sources in 21 portals
22
coordinate systems
8
licences, all open
6

It is public

The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Estonia and Luxembourg publish a 3D model of every building, and Poland of most of the country. Each model is a closed shape with its ground, walls and real roof planes.

It is scattered

Germany alone publishes through sixteen state portals. Every source lists its files in its own way, from Atom feeds and catalogues to a share hidden behind a map.

It does not fit together

The files use four formats, eight coordinate systems and two axis orders. Some label roofs and walls and some do not, and the attribute names differ from source to source.

Coverage

Germany is the largest part, with all sixteen states published. Elsewhere the official models often cover single cities, and in some countries only the laser scans are open, so the roofs have yet to be built from them.

Most of the data opened in three bursts, the last in June 2024, when four German states opened within a week. Sweden, Czechia, Slovenia and Finland are producing their own models.

Column chart of buildings whose 3D model became free to download each year, from 2015 to 2026. The largest year is 2021 with about 24 million, then 2017 with about 15 million, 2024 with 11 million and 2023 with 10 million. Nothing opened in 2025 or 2026.
Map of Europe. Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Estonia and Luxembourg are dark blue for official models of the whole country. Poland, Finland, Austria, Czechia, France, Belgium, Spain and Latvia are mid blue for part of the country. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia are light blue for open laser scans without roofs. France and Norway are striped, where a company has derived roofs for the whole country.

Every source, checked

In October 2026 I downloaded one real tile from every source and read the files. All of them download without an account. The table lists what each one is and what to watch for.

SourceBuildingsOpenedFormatHow the files are listedLicenceWhat to watch for
Netherlands
3DBAG (tudelft3d and 3DGI)
10.8 M2021CityJSON 2.0Tile index serviceCC BY 4.0Most buildings in a city tile fail the publisher's strict geometry check, yet draw fine.
Poland
GUGiK
about 10 M2018CityGML 2.0One file per county, behind a mapCC BY 4.0Covers 10 of 16 regions, from laser scans of 2012.
Estonia
Maa- ja Ruumiamet
0.9 M2021CityGML 2.0One file per municipalityEstonian open data licenceSurfaces are not labelled as roof or wall, and northing comes first.
Luxembourg
Administration du cadastre et de la topographie
not stated2022CityGML 2.0 with photosOne file per communeCC0The capital is one 5.4 GB zip, mostly photos, and northing comes first.
Switzerland, older product
swisstopo
about 3 M2021DXFSTAC catalogueswisstopo open data termsNo building IDs and no roof or wall labels.
Switzerland, newer product
swisstopo
not stated2024CityGML 2.0STAC catalogueswisstopo open data termsCovers about half of the tiles so far, at 1.6 GB per tile unzipped.
Germany, published by each state
Baden-Württemberg
LGL
6.5 M2024CityGML 1.0No index, names follow a griddl-de/by-2.0The zips break the macOS unzip tool.
Bayern
Bayerische Vermessungsverwaltung
10.1 M2023CityGML 1.0Checksum listCC BY 4.0The roof slope field holds 90 minus the slope.
Berlin
Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung
0.6 M2015CityGML 1.0Atom feeddl-de/zero-2.0How the roofs were made is not stated.
Brandenburg
LGB
2.4 M2020CityGML 1.0Directory listingdl-de/by-2.0A third of the buildings keep their shape only in their parts.
Bremen
Landesamt GeoInformation Bremen
0.3 M2024CityGML 1.0One zip inside anotherCC BY 4.0There is no tile list besides the zip's own directory.
Hamburg
LGV Hamburg
0.4 M2017CityGML 1.0One zipdl-de/by-2.0Older links in circulation lead to the 2016 edition.
Hessen
HVBG
5.0 M2022CityGML 1.0The portal's own JSON APIdl-de/by-2.0Download links expire after a day.
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
LAiV
1.3 M2024CityGML 1.0Atom feedCC BY 4.0The server ignores partial downloads.
Niedersachsen
LGLN
7.3 M2021CityGML 1.0STAC catalogueCC BY 4.0The old portal address no longer works.
Nordrhein-Westfalen
Geobasis NRW
11.9 M2017CityGML 1.0XML indexdl-de/zero-2.0About 2,400 of the tiles are empty.
Rheinland-Pfalz
LVermGeo RLP
3.3 M2024CityGML 1.0Directory and checksum listdl-de/by-2.0Single tiles reach 200 MB.
Saarland
LVGL
0.7 Mnot foundINSPIRE GMLWeb service onlydl-de/by-2.0No roof or wall labels, coordinates in degrees, and asking for the usual grid returns zeros.
Sachsen
GeoSN
2.3 M2020CityGML 1.0A file share named in the map appdl-de/by-2.0The official page is a map click, and its file links are dead.
Sachsen-Anhalt
LVermGeo ST
1.8 M2021CityGML 1.0Four bulk zipsdl-de/by-2.0About 600 of the tiles are empty.
Schleswig-Holstein
LVermGeo SH
2.3 M2022CityGML 1.0GeoJSON tile indexCC BY 4.0Every file has a web page appended after its end.
Thüringen
TLBG
2.3 M2017CityGML 1.0Atom feedCC BY 4.0The landing page sits behind a CAPTCHA.
A sheet of 22 small 3D drawings, one city centre from each source. Most show red roofs on grey walls. Estonia, Saarland and the older Swiss product are drawn in blue.
One tile from each source, drawn the same way. Red is a surface the file marks as a roof, grey is a wall, and blue is a surface the file does not label.

The plan

Maphattan will turn the scattered national files into one dataset that is easy to use.

  1. 1

    Collect

    An open fetcher for every source, which knows how that portal lists its files and notices when a new edition appears.

  2. 2

    Harmonise

    One coordinate system and one schema. Roofs and walls are labelled everywhere, the official building ID is kept, and each building says where it came from.

  3. 3

    Publish

    Free downloads per region in open formats, for 3D tools, for analysis and for web maps, with a catalogue of sources, dates and licences.

  4. 4

    Keep current

    Rebuild a region when its agency publishes a new edition, and add countries as they open their data.

The data keeps its original licences, and every download carries the credits its sources require. The code will be open source. Today there is this survey and a demo. The work above is what I am seeking funding for.

On a web map

The demo puts 3DBAG's models of central Amsterdam on a MapLibre map, next to the boxes that open web maps show today. MapLibre has no built-in way to draw a pitched roof yet, so the demo draws them with a custom layer.

Open the demo
Two views of the same street in Amsterdam. On the left the buildings are plain grey boxes. On the right they have their real gabled roofs.

About

I'm Birk Skyum. I co-founded MapLibre, and I work on the rendering in MapLibre GL JS and the MapLibre integration in deck.gl.

Data credits

The drawings on this page contain data from the publishers below, under the licences in the table above. Demo buildings © 3DBAG by tudelft3d and 3DGI, CC BY 4.0. Basemap from OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data from OpenStreetMap. Country outlines from Natural Earth.