Atlas Obscura Scraper

Scrape Atlas Obscura — the world's definitive guide to hidden wonders, unusual, and offbeat destinations. Access 30,000+ extraordinary places with coordinates, descriptions, categories, and images.

What you can do

• Search for unusual places by keyword (ghost towns, underground cities, haunted castles)
• Browse by location — find hidden wonders near any lat/lng coordinates
• Browse by country — explore all unusual places in a specific country
• Browse by category — filter by abandoned, caves, ruins, natural wonders, and 26 more categories
• Get trending — recently added or featured places

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	Select	search, byLocation, byCountry, byCategory, trending
query	Text	Search keyword (mode=search). E.g. ghost town, underground city
country	Text	Country name filter (mode=search or mode=byCountry). E.g. Japan
category	Select	Category to browse (mode=byCategory). E.g. abandoned, caves, ruins
latitude	Number	Center latitude for nearby search (mode=byLocation). E.g. 48.8566
longitude	Number	Center longitude for nearby search (mode=byLocation). E.g. 2.3522
radius	Integer	Search radius in km (mode=byLocation, default: 50)
fetchDetails	Boolean	Fetch full place page for description and categories (default: true)
maxItems	Integer	Max places to return (1–500, default: 20)

Example inputs

Search for ghost towns:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "ghost town",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Find places near Paris:

{
  "mode": "byLocation",
  "latitude": 48.8566,
  "longitude": 2.3522,
  "radius": 25,
  "maxItems": 20
}

Browse abandoned places:

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "abandoned",
  "maxItems": 50
}

All unusual places in Japan:

{
  "mode": "byCountry",
  "country": "Japan",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Output

Each record includes:

Field	Description
placeId	Atlas Obscura internal place ID
name	Place name
subtitle	One-line teaser description
description	Full place description (when fetchDetails=true)
city	City where the place is located
country	Country where the place is located
region	State/region (when available)
address	Street address (when available)
postalCode	Postal code (when available)
latitude	Geographic latitude
longitude	Geographic longitude
categories	List of Atlas Obscura category tags
imageUrl	Main place image URL
placeUrl	Full Atlas Obscura place URL
datePublished	When the place was added to Atlas Obscura
location	"City, Country" location string
recordType	Always "place"
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp when the record was scraped

Example output record

{
  "placeId": 36622,
  "name": "Gold 20-stater of Eucratides I",
  "subtitle": "The heaviest gold coin ever minted.",
  "description": "In the third century B.C., the early Roman Republic issued...",
  "city": "Paris",
  "country": "France",
  "region": "Île-de-France",
  "address": "60 Rue de Rivoli",
  "postalCode": "75004",
  "latitude": 48.856614,
  "longitude": 2.352222,
  "categories": ["Coins", "Money", "Collections", "Museums And Collections"],
  "imageUrl": "https://img.atlasobscura.com/abc123/img.jpg",
  "placeUrl": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/gold-20-stater-of-eucratides-i",
  "datePublished": "2020-05-04",
  "location": "Paris, France",
  "recordType": "place",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-25T10:00:00+00:00"
}

Data Source

Atlas Obscura is an award-winning travel media company cataloging the world's most unusual and extraordinary places. Their database contains 30,000+ destinations across 196 countries. The site provides a public JSON search API and rich HTML pages with schema.org structured data. No authentication is required.

Available Categories

abandoned · ancient · architectural-oddities · art · caves · churches · educational · engineering · food · forests · graveyards · historic-sites · hotels · islands · lakes · libraries · markets · mountains · museums · natural-wonders · observatories · offbeat · parks · ruins · science · shrines · temples · underground · urban-exploration · waterfalls

FAQ

How many places does Atlas Obscura have? Atlas Obscura has over 30,000 extraordinary places cataloged across 196 countries.

Does this require an API key or login? No. Atlas Obscura places are publicly accessible without authentication.

How fast does the scraper run? With fetchDetails=true, each place requires one additional request for the full description and categories. For large datasets, consider setting fetchDetails=false for faster runs with basic metadata only.

Can I filter by multiple categories? Currently one category per run. Run the actor multiple times with different categories and merge the results.

What's the maximum number of results I can get? The actor supports up to 500 places per run. Atlas Obscura's search API returns up to 10,000 results and supports pagination.

Why does byLocation return places worldwide instead of just nearby? Atlas Obscura's API returns globally relevant places alongside nearby ones when the local area has few entries. The coordinates and distance_from_query field indicate actual distance.

Is there a rate limit? The actor respects Atlas Obscura's servers with polite delays between requests. For large extractions (200+ places with full details), runs may take a few minutes.