Who writes this site
Building Guessr is an independent project built around a single idea: that famous buildings are one of the most effective ways to teach geography, history, and cultural context at the same time. The articles, building profiles, and glossary are written and maintained by the site’s operator. There is no editorial team and no outside contributors: one person runs the site, and corrections come back to the same desk.
We are not affiliated with any architecture school, publication, or professional body, and we make no claim to professional architectural credentials. The editorial standard is accuracy, clarity, and usefulness to someone who wants to understand a building or a style more deeply than a single Wikipedia paragraph allows.
How buildings are chosen for the database
The game currently includes 945 buildings. Each entry must pass all of the following criteria before it is added:
- Wikipedia image quality: The building must have at least one high-resolution exterior photograph available on Wikimedia Commons. Interiors, reconstructions, and low-resolution images are excluded.
- Coordinates: Location data is taken from the building's Wikipedia entry. Structures with ambiguous or disputed locations (e.g. ruins spread across a large area) use a single central reference point rather than a precise footprint.
- Standing status: Each building is classified as standing, partial, or lost based on its Wikipedia entry. Partial means the main structure survives but with significant original fabric missing; lost means demolished, destroyed, or reduced to a foundation.
- Visual distinctiveness: We prioritise buildings that can be meaningfully identified from a single photograph. Structures that are visually indistinct or whose only distinguishing feature is their interior are generally excluded.
- Geographic diversity: The database is actively curated to avoid over-representation of any single country or region. Europe receives the most entries due to the volume of photographed historic buildings, but the database includes structures from every inhabited continent.
How articles are researched
Each article in the articles library is written from freely available reference material — principally Wikipedia, supplemented by UNESCO World Heritage listings for inscribed sites. Wikipedia is the main source, not a specialist bibliography. Every article carries a "Sources & further reading" list naming what it draws on, so you can check any claim against the same material we used.
- These are general-interest summaries, not original scholarship. Where a claim is contested among historians, we try to say so rather than pick a side.
- Articles are written to be accurate for a general educated reader, not a specialist. Technical terms are explained on first use and are also defined in the Architecture Glossary.
- Most articles include a "Key Identifiers" section. That part is original synthesis — a practical recognition guide assembled for this site rather than reproduced from a single reference source.
- The "Spotting It in Building Guessr" section is based on the actual game database: the buildings described are real entries that players will encounter.
Correction policy
If you find a factual error in any article or building profile — a wrong date, architect, location, or standing status — please use the contact page to report it. Include the page URL and the specific claim you believe is incorrect, along with a source if you have one. Confirmed errors are corrected as quickly as we can get to them. This is a small independent project, so we cannot promise a fixed turnaround, but reported errors are read and acted on.
Content update schedule
New articles are added periodically as the architecture library grows. There is no fixed review cycle: buildings are added, corrected, or reclassified as image availability changes, as standing status changes, or as errors are reported. Existing articles are updated when a significant correction is needed or when new information substantially changes the topic.
The most recent database update was May 2026.