Long cut
Berlin: the fastest road on earth
The long cut of the Berlin Marathon course.
Long cut
WatchableBerlin: the fastest road on earth
Speed
Chapters
Aerial imagery: Google Earth, and the imagery providers credited on screen in the film.
The Berlin course, end to end. Thirteen world records have been set on this road and almost every explanation credits the flatness; flat is the least interesting true thing about Berlin. The speed is in the geometry: 44 corners, 21 of them before halfway, none of them a hairpin. And the geometry has a cost: six right angles in the last two kilometres, arriving at the point where a runner is least able to pay for them.
Berlin is nearly a plane over 42 km. Eighteen metres of relief across a marathon is what makes the fast road fast, and what makes it a trap.
Rendered from
The open data this film is built from.
4 of 4layers verified usable. Every layer below may enter a render.
| Layer | Role | Resolution | Licence | Commercial use | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin LoD2 city model (LoD2-DE Berlin, CityGML)Geoportal Berlin / Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Bauen und Wohnen · City | Buildings | LoD2 - modelled roof forms, no facade texture | Datenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)Zero-2-0 waives attribution as a legal condition; we credit Geoportal Berlin anyway.The source CityGML carries no ParameterizedTexture at all - the buildings are untextured by design, which is why facades are procedural and the orthophoto is projected top-down only. Six 1 km tiles cover the Phase 1 scene block. | Cleared | |
| Berlin true orthophoto 20 cm (truedop_2023)Geoportal Berlin · City | Imagery | 20cm/px | Datenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)Attribution is not a legal condition; we credit Geoportal Berlin anyway.This is the ground texture for every low pass: a true orthophoto, so building lean is already removed. It is projected top-down onto ground and roofs only; nadir imagery holds no facade data. The vintage is part of the layer rather than a detail of it. Berlin serves each flight as its own WMS layer, 2023 is the one every frame is drawn from, and it was chosen for the season: it is the only leaf-on flight, and the sun in the renders is solved against the light already baked into it. A later vintage is a different photograph of a different summer, so the credit names the year. Verified live against the service's own GetCapabilities on 2026-09-14: layer truedop_2023, titled 'Digitale farbige TrueOrthophotos 2023 (DOP20RGBI)', ows:Fees reading 'Für die Nutzung der Daten ist die Datenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 anzuwenden. Die Lizenz ist über https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/zero-2-0 abrufbar.' and access constraints 'Es gelten keine Zugriffsbeschränkungen.' | Cleared | |
| ATKIS DGM1 - Digitales Geländemodell Berlin, 1 mGeoportal Berlin / Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung · City | Terrain | 1 m grid | Datenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)The reason a Berlin elevation profile is possible at all.This is a DGM, a bare-earth model, defined by its own abstract as excluding vegetation and buildings, where Copernicus GLO-30 is a DSM and carries every rooftop: sampled off that global model the same course reads 197 m of gain, most of it architecture. Sampled through the queryable layer c_dgm1, whose GetFeatureInfo returns a height in metres above NHN. Two things about the number that matter more than the source. Unsmoothed, even this bare-earth series sums to 115 m of gain at 50 m spacing, because at that spacing it is a picture of kerbs and ramps rather than of the ground, which is why the published 35.9 m is quoted with its 1 km smoothing window and its 200 m spacing. And a bare-earth model reads the ground UNDER a bridge, not the deck a runner is on, so canal and Spree crossings sit up to 5 m low in the raw series. Verified live against the service's own GetCapabilities on 2026-09-14: layer c_dgm1 served, ows:Fees naming dl-de/zero-2-0. | Cleared | |
| OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap contributors / OpenStreetMap Foundation · Global | Vectors | vector, street level | Open Database License 1.0 (ODbL)Attribution requiredShare-alike“(c) OpenStreetMap contributors”Explicitly commercial-friendly, which is why the shipped course line is OSM geometry rather than the organiser's GPX. Share-alike binds a derived database, not a rendered frame. Overpass returns HTTP 406 unless a User-Agent header is set. | Cleared |