Dots mark building centres
30 m grid, displayed every fourth cell · Bahlui: OpenStreetMap
City plan · Copernicus GLO-30 and OpenStreetMap
Iași, above the Bahlui
Iași, from river to hill
More than half the ground covered by mapped buildings lies within 20 metres of the Bahlui.
within 20 metresbetween 20 and 50 metres50 metres and abovethe blue line is the Bahlui
The columns run metre by metre, from 10 metres below the river reference to 120 metres above the river. The height of a column is the building footprint area at that height, on Copernicus. The broken line repeats the building footprint area on NASADEM.
2.6% of the mapped building footprint area sits at 120 metres or higher. The mapped points of Galata, Breazu, Șorogari and Repedea stand at least 120 metres above the river, on both surfaces.
How the terrain is drawn
The model uses Copernicus GLO-30 and NASADEM measurements, with heights exaggerated four times to make the valleys visible. Dots mark OpenStreetMap building centres, placed on the modelled surface, which includes roofs and tree canopy. Numbers and comparisons in the text use the complete grids, without this exaggeration.
The numbers on the picture are the mapped point's height above 41.3 metres, on Copernicus, rounded to the nearest metre. Solid colour is the municipality. The paler ground around it runs out to 1.4 kilometres from the boundary. The plan is true to scale, about 18 metres to a pixel.
Of the mapped building footprint area, between 56.6% and 59.3% sits within 20 metres of the river. Of the population grid, between 60.6% and 61.6%. Ground 50 metres or more above the river holds between 17.1% and 18.2% in all four measurements.
The hills
The city's tourist page calls Copou the best known of Iași's seven hills, and says the line between the Breazu and Copou hills is almost impossible to make out. The memorial house of Mihail Sadoveanu is the mark they suggest for that line.
The threshold was chosen before the heights were read. Two summits count as separate hills when the lower one stands at least 30 metres above the pass between them.
Between Breazu and Copou, the drop from the lower of the two summits to the pass is 9.1 metres on Copernicus and 2 metres on NASADEM.
Between Cetățuia and Repedea, the drop from the lower of the two summits to the pass is 15 metres on Copernicus and 18 metres on NASADEM.
Every other pair, apart from those that start at the mapped centre of Bucium, clears 30 metres on both surfaces. Copou stays on the shoulder toward Breazu, and Cetățuia on the shoulder toward Repedea.
Bucium sits 17 metres above the Bahlui. A walk uphill from that point stops at 62 metres on Copernicus and at 145 metres on NASADEM. The two ends stand 83 metres apart, and the walk stays out of the hill count.
The mapped Șorogari peak stands 1,029 metres outside the municipality. The mapped Breazu peak stands 38 metres outside the same line.
The drop from the lower summit
9.1 mCopernicus
2 mNASADEM
One metre up takes the width of 5.3 metres along the line.
The line on the plan joins the two walked summits along the ridge and reaches the pass. The drop from the lower summit is 9.1 metres on Copernicus and 2 metres on NASADEM.
| Name | Copernicus | NASADEM | Boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copou | 97 m | 92 m | inside the boundary |
| Breazu | 147 m | 142 m | outside the boundary |
| Cetățuia | 97 m | 96 m | inside the boundary |
| Galata | 144 m | 145 m | inside the boundary |
| Repedea | 315 m | 311 m | inside the boundary |
| Șorogari | 160 m | 158 m | outside the boundary |
| Bucium | 17 m | 17 m | inside the boundary |
The columns give the mapped point's height above the river. Where a walk uphill finds a higher summit, the difference is in the text above.
The error
At 95% of the 21,740 buildings, the two surfaces differ by at most 4.7 metres. At one of them the difference reaches 19 metres.
The 2020 WorldPop grid, adjusted to the UN estimate, counts 154,181 people inside the boundary. The 2021 census counts 271,692 residents in the municipality. The grid falls short of the census, and its percentages are percentages of the grid.
The lower half of the building footprint area sits 25.7 metres above the river. The lower half of the grid sits 9.2 metres above it. The grid spreads people onto empty low ground. Each square metre of footprint has the same weight, whether it belongs to a shed or a block of flats. The thresholds that hold in all four measurements are 20 metres and 50 metres.
A neighbour-cell measure, with the same 30 metre threshold, stays under 10 metres at every name. The largest value is 9.1 metres, at Copou. Neighbouring cells differ by a few metres. The passes above use the same threshold, along the path between the names.
The river reference is the middle value of the lowest cells within 60 metres of the Bahlui: 41.3 metres on Copernicus and 41 metres on NASADEM. Both surfaces include roofs and canopy. Bare ground under them sits lower wherever there are trees or houses.
Your quarter
Tap the map or a name to see the height of that point and how much of the mapped building footprint area sits lower.
Sources
Copernicus DEM GLO-30, tile N47 E027, from the public AWS registry.
NASADEM, DOI 10.5067/MEaSUREs/NASADEM/NASADEM_HGT.001, tile n47e027.
OpenStreetMap, ODbL. The municipality of Iași is relation 1207838. The newest objects used here are from 10 October 2026. Buildings are closed footprints of at least 15 square metres whose centre falls inside the polygon. 63 building relations stay outside the sum.
The polygon covers 91.94 square kilometres in the Stereo 70 projection.
WorldPop, Romania 2020, rou_ppp_2020_UNadj, an unconstrained grid adjusted to the UN total.
The Copou Hill page on iasi.travel, for the two sentences about the seven hills.
The 2023 Iași county yearbook, from the county statistics office: the municipality has a resident population of 271,692, which is 18,730 fewer than ten years earlier. The same yearbook's table gives 271,692 at the 2021 census and 290,422 at the 2011 census.