Photo location game
Guess where the photo was taken
A photo of a real place and a map. Drop a pin where you think it is and score by how close you land. Five photos a round, no account, nothing to install.
★ 4.7 on Google Play· 60 ratings· 1000+ downloads· Free
Five photos from the sample below, five different countries. Tap the world map where you think each one is.
Tap the map where you think this is
How it works
Each round shows one photo of a named place: a cathedral, a fjord, a volcano, a railway station. You tap the map where you think it is. The true spot appears, a line joins it to your pin, and you get the distance and the points.
Points fall off with distance. A pin inside the place's own accuracy radius scores the full 5,000. Five photos make a round, so 25,000 is the ceiling, and nobody reaches it without knowing what a Norwegian fjord looks like next to a Chilean one.
The pool is 1,226 photos of places in 167 countries, each with its coordinates checked and a one-line fact. In the app the same game runs as a daily: five photos, the same five for everyone that day, and a leaderboard. On this page you get a fresh five from the sample below every time you press start.
How the scoring works
Distance is measured in a straight line from your pin to the true spot. Each place has an accuracy radius, 10 km for a single building and up to 200 km for a whole region, and that radius is free: anything inside it counts as zero distance. Beyond it the score decays.
The formula is 5,000 × e^(−km ÷ 1,000): the score depends only on how far off you are, minus a small radius around the spot. A 1,000 km miss pays 1,839 points, and every further 690 km or so halves it again.
| Miss | Points |
|---|---|
| 0 km past the radius | 5,000 |
| 100 km past the radius | 4,524 |
| 500 km past the radius | 3,033 |
| 1,000 km past the radius | 1,839 |
| 2,500 km past the radius | 410 |
Sample places
30 of 1,226
The largest amphitheatre ever built, in the heart of Rome.
Photo: Wilfredor / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
A pink honeycomb palace facade of hundreds of windows.
Photo: Chainwit. / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A narrow slot canyon of wave-like sculpted sandstone.
Photo: Uploaded by Meckimac / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The desert plateau on the edge of Cairo, with the only surviving ancient wonder.
Photo: Ricardo Liberato / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The sail-shaped shells on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour.
Photo: Diliff / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Monasteries perched atop towering natural rock pillars.
Photo: Jolovema / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A twin-peaked volcano on the edge of Cappadocia.
Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The stepped Maya pyramid of Kukulcán on the Yucatán plain.
Photo: Daniel Schwen / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Morocco's capital, with the Kasbah of the Udayas above the Bou Regreg river.
Photo: Pline / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Round green hobbit-hole doors set in rolling farmland.
Photo: Joe Ross from Lansing, Michigan / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A canal-laced old town beneath the Alps on a glacial lake.
Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Striped rainbow-coloured sandstone ridges in Gansu.
Photo: Terry Wu / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The highest volcano on Earth, 6,893 metres on the Chile–Argentina border.
Photo: sergejf / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Algeria's second city, with the Santa Cruz fort on a hill above the harbour.
Photo: Benba.d.mourad / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tonga's capital, with a white Victorian royal palace facing the harbour.
Photo: Uhooep / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The neoclassical gate at the end of Unter den Linden in Berlin.
Photo: Berthold Werner / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Japan's highest peak, a near-symmetrical volcanic cone.
Photo: Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Alberta's capital, gateway to the north and home of one of the world's largest malls.
Photo: IQRemix / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
South Africa's 'Friendly City' on Algoa Bay, formerly Port Elizabeth.
Photo: Leo za1 / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The main island of Chuuk Lagoon, above a lagoon of sunken WWII warships.
Photo: Flickr user Matt Kieffer / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Gaudí's still-unfinished basilica bristling with organic spires.
Photo: Alvesgaspar / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The world's largest Buddhist temple, tiered with stupas, on Java.
Photo: Gunawan Kartapranata / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A colourful colonial old town of Baroque churches in Bahia.
Photo: Paul R. Burley / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A vast volcanic crater sheltering one of Africa's densest concentrations of wildlife.
Photo: Jantjeerkamp at Dutch Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A ribbon of coral islets only a few hundred metres wide, home to half of Kiribati.
Photo: Photo taken by Government of Kiribati employee in the course of their work / CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Northern Ireland's capital, where the Titanic was built, with a grand Edwardian city hall.
Photo: William Murphy uploaded and derivative work: MrPanyGoff / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The 'Fishtail' peak, a sacred mountain never climbed to its summit.
Photo: Gerd Eichmann / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Often called the world's southernmost city, on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego.
Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Ethiopian capital at 2,355 metres, the diplomatic capital of Africa.
Photo: DaneyWiki / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tuvalu's capital atoll, a ring of coral a few hundred metres wide.
Photo: Stefan Lins / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsEurope by country
22 countries
Italy42 places
Greece38 places
France36 places
Germany35 places
Spain33 places
Switzerland29 places
United Kingdom29 places
Russia26 places
Austria23 places
Iceland21 places
Norway20 places
Croatia19 places
Poland19 places
Portugal17 places
Faroe Islands15 places
Ukraine13 places
Czechia11 places
Finland11 places
Ireland11 places
Romania9 places
Slovakia9 places
Sweden8 placesAsia by country
12 countries
India30 places
Turkey28 places
China24 places
Japan22 places
Indonesia13 places
Iran13 places
Nepal13 places
Pakistan13 places
South Korea11 places
Armenia10 places
Vietnam10 places
Israel8 placesAmericas by country
9 countries
United States33 places
Chile21 places
Mexico21 places
Canada17 places
Brazil12 places
Argentina11 places
Bolivia10 places
Peru9 places
Ecuador8 placesAfrica by country
3 countries
Oceania by country
2 countries
A country gets its own page once it has 8 or more photos in the game.
The same five photos for everyone, once a day, with a leaderboard.
Play the dailyQuestions & answers
Can I use it in a geography lesson?
Yes. Open the page on a projector, press Start, and the class votes on where to drop the pin. No account is needed, every photo is Creative Commons with the credit printed under it, and the country pages give a five-photo round for one country.
Where do the photos come from?
Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons licences. The photographer and the licence are printed under every photo on this site.
How is the score worked out?
Straight-line distance from your pin to the true location, minus the place's accuracy radius, put through an exponential decay. 5,000 points per photo, 25,000 per round. The scoring section above has the exact numbers.
Where is the daily challenge?
The daily run, with the same five photos for everyone and a leaderboard, lives in the app. The round on this page is practice, drawn from the sample photos below.