The World in Squares
Name, link and draw on a square of our world map, land or sea, for €5: a symbolic keepsake for fun, with no right to any real place.
- free
- reserved
- owned
- yours
Map drawn by us from Natural Earth (public domain) and GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
- 5 092 954
- squares on the map
- 1 481 468
- on land
- 3 611 486
- at sea
- …
- taken so far
How it works
- 1
Find your place
Search for a town or drag the map. Land, sea and Antarctica are all there, in squares of about ten kilometres.
- 2
Make it yours
Pay €5 once through Stripe. Then give the square a name, one link and a 32 × 32 drawing in sixteen colours.
- 3
Keep the certificate
You get a PDF with the square number, its coordinates and its real size, and an owner panel to change things later.
Price
- One square€5.00
Once. The square, a name, one link, a drawing and a PDF certificate.
- Pack of three€12.00
Credit for three squares. You pick them one at a time, on the map, whenever you like.
- Pack of ten€35.00
The same, ten times. More canvas, never more power.
- A giftsame price
The name of the person you are giving it to is printed on the certificate. You pay and you pick the square.
These are final prices: nothing is added at checkout. A pack is credit you spend on the map one square at a time; to buy one, pick any free square on the map and choose the pack there. We do not sell random packs, premium colours, extra turns, resale or anything that would let one player buy an advantage over another.
What you are buying
This is a symbolic entertainment product. You are not buying ownership of anything, and the purchase gives you no right, title or claim to any real land, sea, seabed or airspace anywhere on Earth. You are buying a licence to show a name, a link and a drawing on one square of our map, and nothing else.
- The square
Yours on the public map, with the name you choose.
- One link
https only, rel="nofollow ugc", and you can switch it off at any time.
- A drawing
Thirty two by thirty two pixels in sixteen colours. No uploads, which is what keeps moderation possible for one person.
- A certificate
A PDF with the parcel number, the coordinates and the real size of that one square in kilometres. It says in plain words that it grants no right to any real place.
- A promise
Nobody overwrites a paid square. Not another player, not an event, not us.
What this is not
- Not land and not sea. No title deed, no maritime claim, no right to any real ground, water, seabed or airspace, anywhere on Earth.
- Not an investment. We will never tell you a square can go up in value, because it cannot.
- Not crypto, not an NFT, not a token. There is no chain and there is nothing to trade.
- Not gambling. You pick the square yourself at a fixed price. Nothing is random and nothing is won.
- Not an SEO service. Every outgoing link carries rel="nofollow ugc" and we promise no benefit to your ranking.
The whole world is on the map
The grid covers the Earth with 5 092 954 squares and 5 073 960 of them are on sale: 1 471 973 on land and 3 601 987 at sea. Land squares lie in 234 countries and territories, plus Antarctica and 13 areas that carry no country code in the public map data. Our build script counted them from the Natural Earth 1:10m boundaries: a square belongs to the country its centre falls in, so these are computed numbers and not estimates.
A click on a sea square shows the name of the sea or ocean (295 of them have a name in Natural Earth) and the coordinates. A click on Antarctica or on an area without a country code shows the name of the area and never a country: choosing one is not a decision for a map shop. The remaining 18 994 squares next to the poles are outside the Mercator projection, so the map cannot show them and we do not sell them.
House rules
Nothing unlawful, no hate symbols, no sexual content, no incitement to violence, no mockery of religion, no occult imagery, no political extremism, no obscenity, no infringing logos, no malware, no spam links, no personal data of other people and no gambling promotion. Every parcel has a Report button and every removal comes with a written reason and a right of appeal.
Questions people ask
What exactly am I buying?
A square on our map, and nothing else. This is a symbolic entertainment product. You are not buying ownership of anything, and the purchase gives you no right, title or claim to any real land, sea, seabed or airspace anywhere on Earth. You are buying a licence to show a name, a link and a drawing on one square of our map, and nothing else. The certificate says the same thing in the same words.
Can I really buy a square of the sea, or of Antarctica?
Yes, because what you buy is a square on our map and not the place itself. 5 073 960 squares are on sale: 1 471 973 on land and 3 601 987 at sea, and every one of them can be picked on the map. A sea square gives you no right to any water, seabed, fishing, navigation or resource, and no maritime claim of any kind. Antarctica is governed by the Antarctic Treaty; buying a square over it changes nothing about that, and we make no claim there and grant none.
Why does my square show no country?
Land squares show the nearest town, the region and the country, in 234 countries and territories. Sea squares show the name of the sea or ocean instead (295 named seas and oceans from Natural Earth; a few squares far from any named sea say "Open ocean"). Antarctica and 13 areas that carry no country code in the public map data, Somaliland and Northern Cyprus among them, show the name of the area and no country. We never assign one. That is not a political position, a recognition or a denial of recognition; it is simply what the map data says, and it is not ours to decide.
Is a square really ten by ten kilometres?
Almost, and we would rather say so than round it up. A row of the grid is 0.09 degrees of latitude tall, which is 9.95 km at the equator and 10.05 km near the poles. The number of columns in a row follows the cosine of the latitude, so the width stays close to ten kilometres: across every square on sale it runs from 10.02 to 10.06 km. Over Bratislava a square is 10.04 × 10.01 km. The real size of your square is printed on your certificate, and we never write "exactly 10 × 10 km" anywhere.