About the Atlas
The Ethiopian Atlas is an independent, map-first reference to the land, regions and heritage of Ethiopia. It is built from published open data, and every figure on the site can be traced to its source.
It maps administrative geography — regions, zones, woredas, terrain, cities, roads and heritage — and deliberately does not map languages, ethnicity or identity. Boundaries are depicted exactly as published; depiction is not an endorsement.
Sources & licences
April 2026 release · CC BY 3.0 IGO. Regions, zones, woredas and capitals — the current official humanitarian standard.
2022 projections · CC BY 3.0 IGO. Joined by p-code and name — a p-code is not an identity across a reorganisation; regions formed after 2022 show no figure.
The last 90 days of recorded earthquakes for the Horn of Africa, public domain, refreshed on this server every half hour — the browser never leaves this site.
Mapzen terrarium (SRTM, NASA et al.) · zooms 0–8, self-hosted — no external requests.
Public domain · 1:10m physical and roads layers, clipped to Ethiopia.
ODbL · 123 named castles, monasteries, monuments and ruins — community-contributed, not officially verified.
Names, categories and inscription years follow the official register; each site links its record.
Tigray, Simien, Danakil and tef-field images by Elizabeth Laird, used with permission; others under free Commons licences, credited beneath each image.
BSD-3 · self-hosted, as is everything on this site — no CDNs, no trackers, no external services.
Method
Region statistics (areas, ranks, shares, zone and woreda counts, administrative centres) are computed directly from the boundary dataset. Heritage sites are assigned to regions by locating each site's point within the boundary polygons. Where a source omits a value — or a point sits on a boundary — the page says so rather than filling the gap.
Corrections & updates
Corrections are made in the source-backed data model, then rebuilt across every affected page, download and answer — never patched into one page alone. Boundary releases are checked against OCHA, Heritage entries against UNESCO, and live earthquake data refreshes every 30 minutes. The source release or verification date is shown with each dataset; missing or superseded figures remain explicitly marked instead of being silently estimated.
Boundaries
Administrative boundaries are depicted exactly as published by the source, including one area the dataset itself designates “Contested.” Depiction is not an endorsement, and the Atlas takes no position on administrative or territorial status.
The makers
The Atlas was created by Charlie & Toby Cromie, and it began, as the best projects do, with a family story. Their grandfather, Michael Sargent, served in Ethiopia as Director of the British Council in the 1990s and has devoted much of his life since to the country's heritage and its people — a lifelong engagement that filled the family with his fascination for Ethiopia's landscapes, histories and cultures. This site is built in that spirit: an attempt to present the country's regions, mountains, roads and monuments with the care, rigour and restraint they deserve, so that others might catch the same fascination.
The Simien Mountains, live from the Atlas — terrain, roads and boundaries as everywhere else on this site. Hover a summit: ▲ Ras Dejen will tell you its height. The amber point is Simien National Park, a World Heritage site. Open the full map →
Photography
The photographs of Tigray, the Simien Mountains and the Danakil Depression are the gift of Elizabeth Laird, from her own years in Ethiopia — colour slides whose landscapes, as she says, don't change much. We are very grateful. Other region photographs are from Wikimedia Commons under free licences (CC BY / CC BY-SA / public domain), self-hosted, each credited and linked to its source file beneath the image. Narrative paragraphs are limited to well-established geography and this site's own documented heritage, with sources listed under each.
Privacy
No analytics, no cookies, no external requests. Everything on this site — maps, data, fonts, scripts — is served from this domain.