Wiki Loves Monuments is an international event which takes place every September. It brings together amateur and professional photographers alike to capture images of the world’s historic monuments.
These photos are then shared under free licences via Wikimedia Commons, a free media repository which provides most of the images for Wikipedia sites around the world (currently available in 343 languages).
Wiki Loves Monuments is special. Since the competition began in 2010 there have been nearly 3.4 million entries. 56 countries participated in 2024. More than 100,000 photos have been submitted to the UK competition from its beginning in 2013.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of the UK’s cultural heritage. The collections gathered throughout the years of the competition are growing into an incredibly useful historical resource.
Photo of Calfaria chapel by Mark Edwards, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. First Prize winner for the UK 2020 competition.
