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3D Elevation Map

The elevation of everywhere, in interactive 3D.

The lowest dry land on Earth is the shore of the Dead Sea, 440 metres below sea level. The highest is the summit of Mount Everest, 8,849 metres up. Between those two extremes most of the planet is surprisingly low — the average land elevation is about 801 metres, and half of all land sits below 426 metres.

This site maps that relief in true 3D for every place on Earth: 252 so far — every country, all 50 US states, the seven continents, and the whole planet. Grab any one, tilt and spin it, and read the elevation at any point. Each map also gives you the highest and lowest points, the mean and median elevation, and how the land is split across height bands.

The data is real, not decorative. Every map is built from the Copernicus GLO-30 model — a satellite elevation dataset that samples the surface roughly every 30 metres — and rendered as actual terrain, not a flat map shaded by colour. A colour map tells you where the mountains are; a 3D elevation model shows how high they stand, how steeply they rise, and how the land sits between them: the plateau a country’s cities are built on, the trench of a rift valley, the wall of a coastal range.

places mapped
252
places mapped
countries
194
countries
US states
50
US states
continents
7
continents
3D elevation render of Nepal — the Himalaya rising from the Gangetic plain, from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Countries

Every country, rendered from satellite data

Every country is masked to its official boundary and rendered from the same satellite model, so the terrain is comparable everywhere — the Andean spine of Chile, the Himalaya along Nepal’s northern border, the near-flat delta coasts. Open any country to spin its relief and read its high and low points, mean elevation, and the share of its area above each height.

United StatesExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of United States, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Denali, 6,190 m

ItalyExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of Italy, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Monte Bianco (Mont Blanc), 4,806 m

Dramatic terrain to start with

See all 194 countries, sortable by elevation →

Continents & the world

Zoom out to a whole continent — or the entire planet

Zoom out and the same data assembles into whole continents and the entire planet. A continent view shows how ranges connect across borders and where the great lowlands and plateaus lie; the world map draws every landmass at once, which is where the big pattern is clear — most of Earth’s land is low, with the high ground gathered into a few mountain belts.

EuropeExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of Europe, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Mont Blanc, 4,810 m

WorldExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of World, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Mount Everest, 8,849 m

All 7 continents

All 7 continents →The whole world →

US states

All 50 US states in 3D

The 50 US states cover most of the range of North American terrain — the Florida peninsula that barely clears sea level, the Sierra Nevada and Rockies, the long tilt of the Great Plains, the worn Appalachians. Each state is built the same way as a country, so you can read its high and low points and see its relief in 3D.

FloridaExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of Florida, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Britton Hill, 105 m

CaliforniaExplore in 3D →
Interactive 3D elevation map of California, shaded relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 model

Highest point Mount Whitney, 4,421 m

Every US state

All 50 US states →

Methodology

How these maps are made

Every map starts from the Copernicus GLO-30 digital elevation model — the European Space Agency’s global surface model, which records the height of the ground about every 30 metres. Each territory is cut to its official outline using geoBoundaries data, and every figure on its page — mean, median, range, and the share of area above each threshold — is computed directly from that masked grid of heights, not copied from another source.

Highest points get extra care. A coarse grid averages a sharp summit downward, so we re-read the model at its native ~30 metre resolution around each candidate peak and check the result against a researched, source-cited value. A page is published only once its data passes that validation.

The 3D view uses vertical exaggeration: height is scaled up relative to width so the relief is legible, because a country is hundreds of kilometres across but only a few kilometres tall, and at true scale even mountains look almost flat. The elevation numbers themselves are always the real, unexaggerated values. GLO-30 captures landforms rather than individual buildings or trees, and very small or very steep features can be smoothed — so treat these as terrain models accurate to the tens of metres, not surveying instruments.

Read the full methodology →

Rendered from Copernicus GLO-30 (ESA); boundaries from geoBoundaries. Every figure traces to the elevation model or a sourced dossier.