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How to tag monasteries?

7

Hello,

There are many monasteries around and I was wondering what is the most suitable way to tag them.

A monastery (or cloister) is a combination of different things:

  • church - amenity=place_of_worship; religion=christian; denomination=catholic|orthodox; name=something; building=yes
  • chapels - amenity=chapel; building=yes
  • drinking fountains - amenity=drinking_water
  • fountains used for recreation - ?
  • gardens (lawns) - landuse=grass(?)
  • shops selling souvenirs and religious items - shop= ?
  • monk dormitory - building=yes; building=dorm; another tag?
  • some monasteries also offer rooms for outsiders, these should be tagged with tourism=hotel|hostel|chalet ?
  • agricultural buildings - building=yes

The monastery is a congregation of all of these. How would you tag it? Area with amenity=monastery surrounding all of it? I haven't seen such a tag in the wiki... Maybe add tag fenced=yes if necessary.

asked 17 Mar '11, 11:15

ivanatora's gravatar image

ivanatora
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accept rate: 7%

One Answer:

6

You can either make a site-relation adding all the features you mention as belonging to the monastery to it, or draw a polygon around the whole area (the latter gets better evaluated at the moment). All the single features you identified would be usually tagged as suggested by you. For recreational fountains there is amenity=fountain. Agricultural buildings could also be tagged with building=stable/barn instead of yes (I prefer being more specific with buildings, if information is available). The gardens can be tagged as leisure=garden (there is also subtypes for more specific tagging, see the wiki). Chapels are IMHO also amenity=place_of_worship (building=chapel).

The relation / polygon for the whole monastery would be tagged as amenity=monastery according to this proposal which also suggests more subtags for further detail. Former monasteries which are not necessarily monasteries as of today are suggested to be tagged with historic=monastery. Another alternative is described on the discussion page of place_of_worship: place_of_worship:type but it is far older then the above linked monastery proposal and has never been really used by many mappers, so I'd consider it not active and deprecated by the above mentioned proposals which are in wider use.

answered 17 Mar '11, 11:56

dieterdreist's gravatar image

dieterdreist
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accept rate: 3%

edited 19 Jan '12, 11:41

adding a "historic=yes" seems useful, too, if the monastery complex is of historic significance. Also a "tourism=attraction" can be used, if the monastery has significant touristic value - think about the Meteora Monasteries in Greece, for example, where tourists are coming in thousands.

(20 Jan '12, 09:58) moszkva ter

I'd add both in this case, "historic=monastery" and "amenity=monastery" If you have the information, a "start_date=" would enhance detail. And of course "wikipedia="

(20 Jan '12, 10:38) dieterdreist

Source code available on GitHub .