Comprehensive information about Switzerland’s streets

A street name forms an essential and integral part of a building address – a geographic localisation process that we use in our daily lives. In order for a street name to be used for computer-aided administrative tasks or in information systems, a suitable database is required: the official street directory. For every listed street, this directory contains:

• An unambiguous identifier
• A clearly designated street name in each locality – street names in multilingual regions may be listed in more than one language
• The applicable name of the locality and the post code from the official directory of municipalities
• The applicable name and number of the municipality from the official directory of municipalities
• The geographic location of the street
• The status of the street (completed, under construction, etc.).

The data stored in the official street directory are based on the data collected for the cadastral survey. Each municipality (and sometimes the canton itself) manages the data in the federal buildings and dwellings directory that is compiled by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The FSO periodically delivers the data to swisstopo, which supplements them with geometric data and subsequently publishes them for use free of charge by everyone.

Status of the directory

swisstopo updates the data on the basis of the information provided by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The official street directory is publicly available and can be downloaded from www.map.geo.admin.ch.

Utilisation of the directory

The official street directory can be used by the public authorities, as well as by companies for commercial purposes. For example, it can be used as a database for cartographic products and is also suitable for integration into web services. 

Procuring the data

The data are available in different formats: more information