Wiki Loves Monuments is an international event which takes place every September. The competition 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 294 languages).
Wiki Loves Monuments is special. Since the global competition began in 2011 there have been nearly 3 million entries. 36 countries participated in 2021. The UK first took part in 2013, with more than 70,000 photos submitted to across seven editions of the competition.
Taking part helps create a library of free-to-use images that are available for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Photographs submitted to the competition can be used on Wikipedia. Images from the 2020 competition have been viewed more than 300 million times.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. 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.
