Data · snapshot 2026-10-07

What our guides are about

Where the places in our guides are, how old they are, which styles, periods and people the guides talk about, when the places open and what the guides cite. Every chart comes from the guides themselves, with its method and date.

Oldest place in our guides
7000 BCE

Knossos, Greece, by Wikidata's earliest date. Half of the places with a known date were built after 1941.

Off the beaten track
41%

of our places have fewer than five Wikipedia pages, in any language

Most-mentioned person
Virgin Mary

in 1,612 guides, ahead of Jesus Christ and Picasso

Most-mentioned period
Medieval

in 22% of guides; World War II in 16%

Closed on Monday
17.3%

of places with opening hours, against 3.6% on a Wednesday

UNESCO World Heritage
726

places that are, or are part of, a World Heritage Site

Sources per guide
7.5

on average, from 77,900 different websites

Where
113 countries

44,823 places in 1,724 cities

Scale: 493,131 place pages in 11 languages, 533 million words, and ≈34,200 hours of narration in the app. All figures and methods

Where

Every guide is a dot

44,713 English place guides placed by their coordinates. Spin the globe, switch to spikes to see density as height, or jump to a continent.

English place guides binned to a 0.1° grid (about 11 km) by their coordinates. Drag to spin the globe; brighter and taller marks hold more guides.

Countries with the most guides

  1. United States 5,362
  2. Italy 4,425
  3. France 2,778
  4. Germany 2,563
  5. Spain 2,552
  6. India 1,942
  7. United Kingdom 1,858
  8. Japan 1,429
  9. Canada 1,212
  10. China 1,171
  11. Brazil 1,102
  12. Poland 1,078
  13. Czech Republic 986
  14. Russia 926
  15. Hungary 738

Cities with the most guides

  1. Budapest 717
  2. Warsaw 670
  3. Moscow 668
  4. Paris 654
  5. London 653
  6. Prague 586
  7. Chicago 526
  8. New York City 516
  9. Buenos Aires 502
  10. Helsinki 460
  11. Seoul 454
  12. Mexico City 435
  13. Milan 434
  14. Tokyo 420
  15. Madrid 419

Time

Nine thousand years of places

Two views of history, on a logarithmic scale so the ancient world stays visible (switch it off to see the true proportions). Top: when the places were built or founded, from Wikidata (25,717 places have a date; the median is 1941). Bottom: which centuries our guides talk about. The 19th and 20th centuries dominate both, but the guides reach much further back than the buildings do, because they tell the story of the site before the current structure.

Earliest year of Wikidata P571 (inception); if absent, earliest of P580 (start time) / P1619 (date of official opening). BCE years are negative (RDF year 0 = 1 BCE converted). Dates are as precise as Wikidata records them (often century/decade precision). Values after 2026 dropped.
Each English guide counts once per century it mentions, as a four-digit year, a year marked AD/CE/BC, or an ordinal century ('15th century'). n = 44,608.

The oldest places we cover

  1. 7000 BCE Knossos Greece
  2. 4395 BCE Susa Iran
  3. 3600 BCE Megalithic Temples Of Malta Malta
  4. 3180 BCE Skara Brae United Kingdom
  5. 3101 BCE Memphis Egypt
  6. 3001 BCE Mycenae Greece
  7. 3001 BCE Stonehenge United Kingdom
  8. 2801 BCE Giza Pyramids Egypt
  9. 2640 BCE Pyramid Of Djoser Egypt

Earliest date Wikidata records for the site, which for settlements is the first evidence of occupation.

What we cover

Not only the famous ones

Kinds of places

  1. Building (other) 5,47716.5%
  2. Museum 4,42813.3%
  3. Other attraction 3,0209.1%
  4. Statue 2,2186.7%
  5. Church 2,0826.3%
  6. Monument 1,5254.6%
  7. Theatre 1,3814.1%
  8. Palace 1,1423.4%
  9. Square 1,0663.2%
  10. Fortification 9142.7%
  11. Stadium 8392.5%
  12. Park 8342.5%
  13. Bridge 7542.3%
  14. Archaeological site 6782.0%
  15. Temple 5241.6%
  16. Locality 5141.5%
  17. Garden 4811.4%
  18. Mosque 4611.4%
  19. Cathedral 4571.4%
  20. Library 4261.3%

Category of each place in the Audiala Places open dataset (CC BY 4.0): Wikidata class matched to a 50-value tourism vocabulary; non-tourism places excluded. n = 33,289.

How famous are they?

Number of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia pages about each place, in any language. A world landmark has 100 or more; a local church has one or two. 41% of our places have fewer than five: the long tail other guides skip.

Wikidata sitelinks per place, n = 44,593, median 5.

Heritage listings

  1. Italian national heritage 1,595
  2. National Register of Historic Places listed place 1,075
  3. Monument historique inscrit 604
  4. Bien de interés cultural 527
  5. Classified historical monument 499
  6. Part of UNESCO World Heritage Site 460
  7. Immovable monument in Poland 364
  8. Grade II listed building 315

Wikidata P1435 (heritage designation) on 11,743 places. 184 are World Heritage Sites themselves, 542 are part of one.

Semantic map

Every guide, arranged by meaning

We turned each English guide into a sentence embedding and flattened the result to two dimensions. Guides that talk about similar things land close together: cathedrals with cathedrals, war memorials with war memorials, wherever they are in the world. Hover a dot to see the place; click a colour in the legend to isolate a group.

Sentence embeddings (bge-small-en-v1.5) of each English guide's title and introduction, with city and country names removed and each country's average subtracted, so places group by what they are rather than where they are; projected with UMAP. Scroll or pinch to zoom the 2D map, drag the galaxy to orbit it, click a dot to open its guide.

Styles and eras

Renaissance, Gothic, Baroque

Architectural styles mentioned

  1. Renaissance 6,63014.8%
  2. Gothic 6,09413.6%
  3. Baroque 5,71112.8%
  4. Neoclassical 4,71910.5%
  5. Modernist 3,6968.3%
  6. Romanesque 2,3535.3%
  7. Islamic 1,8394.1%
  8. Art Nouveau 1,7143.8%
  9. Victorian 1,6833.8%
  10. Ottoman 1,5143.4%
  11. Art Deco 1,3733.1%
  12. Byzantine 1,3483.0%
  13. Classical Greek 1,2912.9%
  14. Buddhist 1,2372.8%
  15. Moorish 8932.0%
  16. Hindu temple 7831.8%
  17. Mughal 5981.3%
  18. Rococo 5091.1%

English guides whose text mentions the style (fixed vocabulary, case-insensitive, synonyms grouped).

Historical periods mentioned

  1. Medieval 9,71121.7%
  2. World War II 7,23116.2%
  3. Colonial 4,54510.2%
  4. Roman Empire 1,8334.1%
  5. Cold War 1,5453.5%
  6. World War I 1,2762.9%
  7. Industrial Revolution 1,2412.8%
  8. Napoleonic 1,1652.6%
  9. Prehistoric 8892.0%
  10. Ancient Greece 5451.2%
  11. Habsburg 5021.1%
  12. Ancient Egypt 2230.5%
  13. Viking 1990.4%
  14. Crusades 1790.4%

English guides whose text mentions the period (fixed vocabulary).

Architects with the most places

  1. Skidmore, Owings & MerrillBurj Khalifa, Willis Tower 71
  2. Oscar NiemeyerHeadquarters Of The United Nations, Ibirapuera Park 49
  3. PopulousSoccer City Stadium, Estádio Da Luz 39
  4. Andrea PalladioGallerie Dell'Accademia, Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotonda) 37
  5. Kohn Pedersen FoxLotte World Tower, Ping An Finance Centre 34
  6. Mimar SinanŞehzade Mosque, Banya Bashi Mosque 26
  7. Nikken SekkeiTokyo Skytree, Kyocera Dome Osaka 26
  8. Frank Lloyd WrightSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Robie House 25
  9. César PelliPetronas Towers, Torre De Cristal 22
  10. Santiago CalatravaAuditorio De Tenerife, City Of Arts And Sciences 21

Wikidata P84 (architect), 6,560 places with an architect on record.

People

Who the guides talk about

Saints and artists lead, because churches and museums are where most stories are told. Napoleon is the most-mentioned ruler.

  1. Virgin Mary 1,612
  2. Jesus Christ 1,188
  3. Picasso 519
  4. Saint Peter 515
  5. Napoleon Bonaparte 514
  6. Buddha 504
  7. Saint George 403
  8. Michelangelo 334
  9. Saint Paul 302
  10. Shakespeare 263
  11. Goethe 260
  12. Mahatma Gandhi 255
  13. Saint Francis of Assisi 236
  14. Louis XIV 233
  15. Queen Victoria 229
  16. Monet 213
  17. Chopin 210
  18. Dante 195
  19. Rembrandt 191
  20. Leonardo da Vinci 177
  21. Martin Luther King Jr. 175
  22. John Paul II 174
  23. Mozart 172
  24. Rubens 162
  25. Antoni Gaudí 157

English guides that mention the person by name (fixed list of 98 figures; places named after them count).

Themes

Kings, saints, fires and ghosts

11,037 guides mention a king, queen or emperor. 5,355 tell a legend. 3,685 mention a fire, 1,138 an earthquake, 283 the plague, and 488 a ghost.

  1. Water 13,13229.4%
  2. Free entry 12,96729.0%
  3. Panoramic views 12,60928.2%
  4. Music 12,53428.0%
  5. Royalty 11,03724.7%
  6. Gardens 7,86717.6%
  7. UNESCO 7,19116.1%
  8. Sculpture 6,95915.6%
  9. Saints 6,20413.9%
  10. Legend & myth 5,35512.0%
  11. Painting 4,72710.6%
  12. Film 4,70510.5%
  13. Love & romance 4,70010.5%
  14. Sunset views 4,50910.1%
  15. Fire 3,6858.2%
  16. Pilgrimage 2,8156.3%
  17. Coffee 2,5765.8%
  18. Revolution 2,4515.5%
  19. Siege & battle 2,0814.7%
  20. Wine 1,9304.3%
  21. Literature 1,4503.2%
  22. Beer 1,2512.8%
  23. Earthquake 1,1382.5%
  24. Hidden gem 9892.2%
  25. Instagram 9302.1%
  26. Ghosts 4881.1%
  27. Plague 2830.6%

English guides whose text mentions the theme (fixed vocabulary). Mentions, not topics: a guide that says a museum is "free on Sundays" counts under free entry.

Opening hours

When the world is open

Share of places open at each hour of the week, local time, across 15,347 places with published hours. Sunday is the quietest day (21.4% of places shut), but Monday is the museum day off: 17.3% stay shut, against 3.6% on a Wednesday.

00h03h06h09h12h15h18h21hMonMon 00:30 — 26% openMon 01:30 — 26% openMon 02:30 — 26% openMon 03:30 — 26% openMon 04:30 — 26% openMon 05:30 — 27% openMon 06:30 — 31% openMon 07:30 — 36% openMon 08:30 — 48% openMon 09:30 — 65% openMon 10:30 — 77% openMon 11:30 — 79% openMon 12:30 — 78% openMon 13:30 — 77% openMon 14:30 — 78% openMon 15:30 — 77% openMon 16:30 — 72% openMon 17:30 — 59% openMon 18:30 — 48% openMon 19:30 — 42% openMon 20:30 — 37% openMon 21:30 — 34% openMon 22:30 — 30% openMon 23:30 — 28% open17.3% shutTueTue 00:30 — 26% openTue 01:30 — 26% openTue 02:30 — 26% openTue 03:30 — 26% openTue 04:30 — 26% openTue 05:30 — 27% openTue 06:30 — 31% openTue 07:30 — 36% openTue 08:30 — 48% openTue 09:30 — 68% openTue 10:30 — 86% openTue 11:30 — 89% openTue 12:30 — 88% openTue 13:30 — 87% openTue 14:30 — 87% openTue 15:30 — 87% openTue 16:30 — 81% openTue 17:30 — 65% openTue 18:30 — 51% openTue 19:30 — 44% openTue 20:30 — 38% openTue 21:30 — 34% openTue 22:30 — 30% openTue 23:30 — 28% open6.5% shutWedWed 00:30 — 26% openWed 01:30 — 26% openWed 02:30 — 26% openWed 03:30 — 25% openWed 04:30 — 26% openWed 05:30 — 27% openWed 06:30 — 31% openWed 07:30 — 36% openWed 08:30 — 49% openWed 09:30 — 68% openWed 10:30 — 87% openWed 11:30 — 91% openWed 12:30 — 90% openWed 13:30 — 89% openWed 14:30 — 90% openWed 15:30 — 89% openWed 16:30 — 84% openWed 17:30 — 67% openWed 18:30 — 52% openWed 19:30 — 44% openWed 20:30 — 38% openWed 21:30 — 34% openWed 22:30 — 30% openWed 23:30 — 28% open3.6% shutThuThu 00:30 — 26% openThu 01:30 — 26% openThu 02:30 — 26% openThu 03:30 — 25% openThu 04:30 — 26% openThu 05:30 — 27% openThu 06:30 — 31% openThu 07:30 — 36% openThu 08:30 — 49% openThu 09:30 — 68% openThu 10:30 — 88% openThu 11:30 — 92% openThu 12:30 — 91% openThu 13:30 — 90% openThu 14:30 — 91% openThu 15:30 — 90% openThu 16:30 — 84% openThu 17:30 — 67% openThu 18:30 — 53% openThu 19:30 — 45% openThu 20:30 — 39% openThu 21:30 — 35% openThu 22:30 — 30% openThu 23:30 — 28% open2.7% shutFriFri 00:30 — 26% openFri 01:30 — 26% openFri 02:30 — 26% openFri 03:30 — 26% openFri 04:30 — 26% openFri 05:30 — 27% openFri 06:30 — 31% openFri 07:30 — 36% openFri 08:30 — 48% openFri 09:30 — 67% openFri 10:30 — 87% openFri 11:30 — 91% openFri 12:30 — 90% openFri 13:30 — 89% openFri 14:30 — 90% openFri 15:30 — 89% openFri 16:30 — 83% openFri 17:30 — 67% openFri 18:30 — 52% openFri 19:30 — 45% openFri 20:30 — 39% openFri 21:30 — 35% openFri 22:30 — 31% openFri 23:30 — 28% open3.4% shutSatSat 00:30 — 27% openSat 01:30 — 26% openSat 02:30 — 26% openSat 03:30 — 26% openSat 04:30 — 26% openSat 05:30 — 27% openSat 06:30 — 31% openSat 07:30 — 34% openSat 08:30 — 42% openSat 09:30 — 56% openSat 10:30 — 75% openSat 11:30 — 79% openSat 12:30 — 79% openSat 13:30 — 78% openSat 14:30 — 78% openSat 15:30 — 78% openSat 16:30 — 74% openSat 17:30 — 62% openSat 18:30 — 50% openSat 19:30 — 43% openSat 20:30 — 38% openSat 21:30 — 34% openSat 22:30 — 31% openSat 23:30 — 28% open15.8% shutSunSun 00:30 — 27% openSun 01:30 — 26% openSun 02:30 — 26% openSun 03:30 — 26% openSun 04:30 — 26% openSun 05:30 — 27% openSun 06:30 — 30% openSun 07:30 — 34% openSun 08:30 — 41% openSun 09:30 — 53% openSun 10:30 — 69% openSun 11:30 — 73% openSun 12:30 — 74% openSun 13:30 — 73% openSun 14:30 — 73% openSun 15:30 — 73% openSun 16:30 — 69% openSun 17:30 — 58% openSun 18:30 — 47% openSun 19:30 — 40% openSun 20:30 — 36% openSun 21:30 — 33% openSun 22:30 — 30% openSun 23:30 — 28% open21.4% shut
Structured opening hours on English guides (Google Places periods). Share of places open at half past each hour, local time. Darker = more places open. Right column: places closed all day.

City size

Big cities, small towns

Each dot is a city: its population against the number of places we cover there. Big capitals get hundreds of guides, but small heritage towns punch far above their size.

Cities with at least one English place guide and a Wikidata population (P1082) whose Wikidata entry matches the city name. Cities under 1,000 inhabitants left out. Both axes are logarithmic.

Most guides per inhabitant (cities with 20+ guides)

CityPopulationGuidesGuides per 100,000 people
Ballater1,460332,260
Valletta6,444951,474
Karlovy Vary49,073173353
Capri6,80422323
Isola Vicentina10,22823225
Richmond21,46942196
Dinan14,76428190
Baden-Baden57,420107186
Peschiera Del Garda10,96120183
Bruges118,509205173
Siena52,81280152
Assisi27,60531112

Skyline

The tallest places we cover

524 places with a guide stand 100 metres or taller; 100 pass 300 metres. Here are the twelve tallest, to scale.

Height from Wikidata (P2048) for built structures; proposals and data errors removed. n = 1,367 places with a height.

Research

337,502 sources behind the English guides

Each guide lists the sources it was researched from: 7.5 on average, across 77,900 different websites. 8,328 guides cite a government, university or academic source. How guides are researched, drafted and checked: editorial process.

Sources per guide

Sources listed at the end of each English guide; a guide counts once per site it cites. 20 means 20 or more.

Reference works cited

  1. Wikipedia 32,23172.0%
  2. Lonely Planet 1,6973.8%
  3. UNESCO 1,3002.9%
  4. Britannica 9932.2%
  5. Time Out 6801.5%
  6. ArchDaily 6131.4%
  7. Atlas Obscura 5131.1%
  8. Academia.edu 4451.0%
  9. Tripadvisor 4180.9%
  10. Google Arts & Culture 3830.9%
  11. Wikimedia Commons 3050.7%
  12. Smarthistory 720.2%

Words

How long is a guide?

Across all languages the guides hold 533 million words, about 907 times War and Peace. The English guides alone hold 53.7 million words; eight in ten run between 954 and 1,445 words.

Length of English guides

Words in the English guide text (intro, body, highlights, practical sections); navigation, image captions and source lists excluded. n = 44,739, median 1,158, mean 1,200. The last bar is 3,000 words or more.

The longest guides

  1. Buddha Tooth Relic Temple And Museum 6,098
  2. Klášter Augustiniánů Kanovníků 5,891
  3. Palais Du Pharo 5,737
  4. San Francisco Ferry Building 5,656
  5. Casa Molino De Ángel Ganivet 5,643
  6. Confederation Square 5,623
  7. Ludington Building 5,575
  8. Kaufhauskanal 5,492

Languages

Every guide, in 11 languages

Every guide exists in each language. French and Spanish versions run longer than English, as those languages tend to.

LanguagePlace pages (live)Median guide lengthTotal
English44,7311,158 words53.7 million words
French44,6831,447 words67.3 million words
German44,6511,167 words54.4 million words
Italian44,6911,314 words61.3 million words
Spanish44,6201,391 words64.7 million words
Portuguese44,5731,310 words61.3 million words
Russian44,5941,114 words51.5 million words
Japanese45,6105,855 characters303.7 million characters
Chinese45,8324,672 characters224.5 million characters
Hindi44,5911,341 words67.2 million words
Czech44,5551,107 words51.0 million words

Published place pages per language; median guide length in words (characters for ja/zh). Live page counts from the build of 2026-10-08; lengths from the snapshot of 2026-10-07.

Growth

How the app catalogue grew

151,708 places now have a published guide in the Audiala app; the chart dates each one by the month it entered the catalogue (any language). The website publishes the 44,823 with a full long-form guide; the app also carries shorter narrations for many more.

Places in the Audiala app catalogue with a published guide, by the month the place was first created in Audiala's content database (any language).

Every figure

All figures, sources and methods

Live counts: built 2026-10-08, from the pages this website publishes, across every language; place pages marked noindex excluded. Analysis snapshot: 2026-10-07.

FigureValueMethod
Place guides (all languages)493,131Published place pages across 11 languages; each language version counts once.
Distinct places44,823Places with at least one published guide, counted once across languages (by Wikidata ID).
Place guides in English44,731Published English place pages.
City guides in English1,986English city hub pages.
Countries with place guides113Countries with at least one English place guide (snapshot).
Words written532,559,331Frontmatter scan of every published place page under content/<lang>/ (noindex excluded). Words = whitespace-separated tokens of the guide text; Japanese and Chinese are counted in characters and kept out of the word total.
Characters in Japanese and Chinese528,168,028Same scan, Japanese and Chinese pages.
Narrations in the app798,033Distinct (place, language) pairs with a published narration in Audiala's content database; length from a random sample of 185 narrations (en/fr/de/es/it), mean 2 min 34 s.
Hours of narration (estimate)≈34,200Narrations × mean sampled length.
Sources cited, English guides337,502Sources listed at the end of each English guide; a guide counts once per site it cites. 20 means 20 or more.
UNESCO World Heritage places726Wikidata P1435 (heritage designation). UNESCO WHS = P1435 contains Q9259 (World Heritage Site). 'Part of a WHS' = P361 (part of) an item whose P1435 is Q9259, not itself designated.
Median English guide1,158 wordsWords in the English guide text (intro, body, highlights, practical sections); navigation, image captions and source lists excluded.
Median year built1941Earliest year of Wikidata P571 (inception); if absent, earliest of P580 (start time) / P1619 (date of official opening). BCE years are negative (RDF year 0 = 1 BCE converted). Dates are as precise as Wikidata records them (often century/decade precision). Values after 2026 dropped.

Want the raw data? The Audiala Places open dataset lists the places with coordinates, names in 11 languages, categories and fame signals, under CC BY 4.0.

Company

FigureValueSource and methodAs of
Places with a long-form guide44,823 in 113 countriesDistinct places (by Wikidata ID) with a published guide on audiala.com; the same guides are in the app. Counted at every build.2026-10-08
Places in the app151,708Places with a published guide in the Audiala app, including shorter narrations not published on the website.2026-10-07
Registered travelers42,000+Accounts in Audiala's user database since August 2023.2026-09-23
Guide and app languages11English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi and Czech. The website's general pages are also in Arabic, without guides.2026-10-08
CompanyAudiala Solutions SA, Morges, Switzerland, founded 2023Swiss commercial register, UID CHE-248.062.756.2023-09-19

The first row is counted from the published guides at every build; the second from the app's catalogue on the date shown. Questions about these numbers: [email protected]. See also About Audiala and how guides are made.