Taiwan Old-Map Stroll

yunching0513

About this app

Walk through today's city with century-old maps.

Taiwan Old-Map Stroll overlays 19 historical map tilesets curated by Academia Sinica onto the modern map — the road under your feet may once have been an irrigation canal, a sugar railway, or a village that no longer exists.

▍19 historical maps covering all of Taiwan

· Japanese era (1904–1944): Taiwan Hōzu 20K, 100K topo, mountain-territory survey, 50K topo, 25K topo, aerial-revised editions
· WWII U.S. Army (1944–1945): 25K-A, 25K-B, 50K, city plans
· Economic Survey era (1950–2003): four generations of topographic maps
· CORONA satellite imagery (1966 / 1969): declassified Cold-War photos

Every layer can be toggled independently, with adjustable opacity, zoomable to block level.

▍Then & Now

Drag the Swipe Compare bar to slide between 1904 and today. Four Eras places the same spot across four periods side by side, showing how the city grew into what it is now.

▍Postcard Stroll

217 historic sites across Taiwan hide Japanese-era postcards. Walk within 50 meters of one and it "develops" into your collection — collect history like stamps, and rediscover your own city like a treasure hunt. Every postcard includes historical notes and sources (public-domain, Wikimedia Commons).

▍GPS stroll recording

· Live location with accuracy ring
· One-tap route recording with live distance and duration
· Photos along the way, automatically tagged with coordinates, time, and the active historical layer
· Collect seals from all 22 cities and counties; review every stroll on the calendar
· Export traces as GeoJSON for QGIS / geojson.io

▍Share your stroll

Generate beautiful share cards — vermilion route lines, polaroid thumbnails, postcards with their stories — straight to Instagram or LINE.

▍22 cities and counties

From Keelung to Pingtung, Hualien to Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — one-tap switching. Interface available in Traditional Chinese, English, and Japanese.

▍Fully client-side, zero backend

All data (GPS traces, photos, collections) stays on your device. Never uploaded to any server. No accounts, no tracking, no ads.

▍Sources

· Historical tiles: Academia Sinica GIS Center
· Modern orthophoto: NLSC, Taiwan
· Street basemap: CARTO / OpenStreetMap
· Postcards: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

History isn't in a textbook — it's on the street you're walking.

Built by Yunching Wu

What’s new

台灣舊地圖散策｜歷史不只在課本裡，也在你走的這條路上。

打開 App，你站的位置會同時出現在 1904 年的臺灣堡圖、1944 年的美軍地圖、1966 年的 CORONA 衛星影像上。19 套中研院典藏圖磚、橫跨一世紀，覆蓋全臺 22 縣市。拉動對照拉桿、轉動時光快轉，看城市如何一層層長成今天的樣子。

232 張日治時期老明信片藏在全臺各地的歷史現場：總督府、榮町、鹿港老街、花蓮港⋯⋯走到現場 50 公尺內，泛黃的明信片就會顯影進你的圖鑑。每一張都是逐件查證的公有領域影像，標註攝影者與原始出處。