Berlin Christmas Market Finder

Mulled wine and festive bliss – Berlin Christmas markets at a glance!

About the project:

Every year, the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises (SenWEB) publishes an open data set on Berlin’s Christmas markets. Up until now, however, there has been no comprehensive overview of Christmas markets in Berlin that allows people to digitally explore Christmas markets at a glance, filter them by information and display them on a map. 

The Berlin Christmas Market Finder fills exactly this gap: it’s an interactive map that gives you a consistent overview showing the days and times when Christmas markets are open in Berlin. You can also discover which Christmas markets offer free admission and where there are special attractions. In addition, you can find out the best way to get there by S-Bahn (rapid transit train) and U-Bahn (underground train) and where there are public toilets. And to share your new favorite spot with others, you can simply click on the share function.

To the Berlin Christmas Market Finder

Background:

The web map initially displays the more than 60 Christmas market locations in Berlin. By clicking on an individual Christmas market, represented by means of a star symbol, the user is directed to further information on the market such as address, directions, website, admission prices, opening hours and other details. The various filtering options are the app’s main function. Here you can use a slider to select a date and an opening period. Additionally, you can filter for Christmas markets that are free of charge and also for the categories “international Christmas markets” and “design markets”. Any Christmas markets that don’t match the filter settings are then grayed out. Public transport locations are displayed as standard on an additional controllable map layer. The location of public toilets can be optionally faded in by means of a slider. The house icon takes the user to the project description, including further information on the data basis and functionalities. The application is designed for convenient use on a smartphone. There is also a function that allows users to share a map section with others. 

This application is based entirely on open data. Open data is now an important part of Berlin’s administrative activities, not only creating transparency and openness but also enabling analytics and applications like this to make day-to-day life more convenient. For this purpose, the Open Data Information Service supports and advises the Berlin authorities on the provision of open data. See the Berlin Data Portal for more open data.

To the Berlin Christmas Market Finder

Data basis and method: 

The Christmas markets shown are taken from the dataset Berlin Christmas Markets 2022which is provided annually by the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises. This means that only the markets reported to the Senate Administration are listed, so the app does not claim to be exhaustive. The map also contains the locations of public toilets: this information is also available on the Berlin Open Data Portal and is regularly updated by the Senate Department for the Environment, Urban Mobility, Consumer Protection and Climate Action. A different VBB open data set was used to identify S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations near the markets. Christmas markets that are located less than 400 meters away as the crow flies from these stops are shown accordingly when the “short distances” filter is applied. The background map is based on the OpenStreetMap. Individual Christmas markets are only shown by means of a placeholder image. This is because ODIS only wants to use images that are available in Wikimedia Commons, the central, openly accessible media archive.

The processed data and the scripts for data processing can be found in this repository .

Who’s involved?

The Berlin Christmas Market Finder is a project run by the Open Data Information Service (ODIS) in cooperation with CityLAB Berlin. ODIS is supported by the Berlin Senate Department for the Interior, Digitalization and Sports and Investitionsbank Berlin with funds from the State of Berlin and is a project of the Technology Foundation Berlin.

Contact

Lisa Stubert, Project Lead ODIS