The Artistic Heritage layer maps cultural and historical points of interest within and around the area of analysis. It identifies historic sites, places of worship, monuments, castles, ruins, and other culturally significant landmarks by querying the OpenStreetMap database through the Overpass API.
Each identified feature is enriched with metadata from Wikidata, including descriptive information and representative images from Wikimedia Commons. This enrichment process transforms raw geographic data into a comprehensive cultural heritage inventory that can be used for landscape assessment, cultural impact evaluation, and stakeholder communication.
The output is a structured CSV file containing: feature name, geographic coordinates, heritage category, distance from the site centroid, and image URL (when available).
Cultural heritage mapping is increasingly recognized as an important component of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, contributing to the social dimension of sustainability assessments.
Data retrieval pipeline:
OSM Query — The Overpass API is queried with a bounding box derived from the analysis area (with buffer). Relevant OSM tags are filtered:
historic=* (castles, ruins, monuments, memorials, archaeological sites)amenity=place_of_worship (churches, mosques, synagogues, temples)tourism=museum | tourism=gallery | tourism=artworkheritage=* (UNESCO and national heritage sites)Geocoding and deduplication — Results are geocoded, duplicates are removed based on proximity (< 50 m) and name similarity
Wikidata enrichment — Each feature is matched to its Wikidata entity (via wikidata OSM tag or name-based search). Retrieved metadata includes:
Distance calculation — Geodesic distance from each heritage feature to the site centroid is computed
Output generation — Final CSV with columns: name, latitude, longitude, category, distance_km, image_url, wikidata_id
| Source | Provider | Type | Coverage | Update Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap | OSM Foundation | Vector (POI) | Global | Continuous (crowd-sourced) |
| Wikidata | Wikimedia Foundation | Structured metadata | Global | Continuous |
| Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Foundation | Images | Global | Continuous |
Documentation: Overpass API, Wikidata Query Service
wikidata tags in OSM or successful name-based fuzzy matchingLa mappa Artistic Heritage identifica gli elementi del patrimonio artistico e culturale utilizzando i dati OpenStreetMap interrogati tramite Overpass API, arricchiti con informazioni da Wikidata e immagini da Wikimedia Commons. Le tipologie di elementi cercate sono: - historic: siti archeologici, campi di battaglia, edifici storici, castelli, chiese, monasteri, monumenti, rovine; - amenity=place_of_worship: cattedrali, sinagoghe, templi e altri luoghi di culto; - man_made: ponti storici, acquedotti; - memorial: monumenti commemorativi e ai caduti; - tourism: attrazioni con heritage level 1 o 2, siti UNESCO. La ricerca avviene entro un raggio configurabile (default 10 km) dal centro dell'area. Vengono applicati filtri per escludere elementi troppo numerosi o non rilevanti: Stolpersteine (memoriali individuali), wayside_shrine, boundary_stone, e elementi senza nome. Per gli elementi con tag 'wikidata', viene eseguita una query SPARQL per recuperare URL Wikipedia e filename dell'immagine, che viene poi convertito in URL thumbnail Wikimedia Commons. Per ogni elemento viene calcolata la distanza haversine dal centro dell'area. L'output include: ID OSM, nome, coordinate, macro-categoria, categoria specifica, descrizione, QID Wikidata, URL immagine, URL Wikipedia, distanza in metri. I risultati sono ordinati per distanza.