Old photos

Old photos by city

The archive behind Time Portal holds about 2.3 million historical photographs, each pinned where it was taken. This is how many there are of each of these cities, how far back they go, and how much of each you can see for free.

Counted 25 September 2026 · within a few kilometres of each city centre

Photographs taken within the stated distance of each city centre, as the archive counts them. “Oldest” is the earliest photograph dated to within five years; prints and engravings the archive files among its photographs are left out. Free: the share from 1955 or later, which opens with no account.
City	Photographs	Oldest	Busiest	Free
Moscow within 15 km	302,374	1845–1847	1980s	73%
Saint Petersburg within 12 km	156,097	1840–1845	1980s	69%
Kyiv within 12 km	58,166	1848	1980s	69%
New York within 10 km	32,765	1849	1920s	17%
Berlin within 10 km	29,892	1840	1960s	48%
Paris within 7 km	27,345	1839	1900s	27%
Prague within 7 km	15,143	1856	1990s	67%
Tbilisi within 8 km	9,433	1858	1970s	69%
Odesa within 8 km	8,511	1859	1970s	80%
Riga within 8 km	7,074	1856	1970s	65%
Rome within 6 km	6,967	1841	1960s	43%
London within 10 km	6,509	1839	1960s	47%

What the numbers say

Moscow alone has about 302,000 photographs and Saint Petersburg about 156,000; Kyiv, New York, Berlin and Paris each have tens of thousands. Coverage thins out from there — it follows wherever the archive's contributors have been most active — but it is worldwide, and the only way to know what exists for one particular street is to search it.

The former Soviet cities on this list — Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Riga and Odesa — were photographed most in the 1970s and 1980s, so between 65 and 80 per cent of their photographs are free to open. New York and Paris are the other way round: photographed most in the first half of the twentieth century, so only 17% and 27% of theirs are, and the rest is part of Pro.

Each city page breaks its number down by decade and by landmark, names the oldest photograph, and opens the map on the city with one click. For anywhere else, the map searches any address.

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How this is counted: every published photograph inside a square around each city centre, summed from the archive's own clusters, on 25 September 2026. Numbers move as photographs are added. See also the stories, questions and answers and how Time Portal compares.