The slope you feel in your knees
In Brașov, a Transylvanian city at the foot of the Carpathians, the shortest walk from the old Romanian quarter of Șchei to the tower blocks of Răcădău is 2,579 m long and goes over Tâmpa, the forested mountain above the old town, by forest paths across its saddle. You climb 77.4 floors and walk for 58 minutes. Going round the foot of the mountain is 1,157 m longer, climbs 31.7 floors and gets you there sooner: in 48 minutes.
A floor is 3 m. With that measure, every walk gets two numbers a map does not show: how many floors you climb and how many you come down. On the streets, lanes and footways of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca, as far as the map reaches, 6.9% of the length is steeper than 8%, that is, more than 13 floors per 500 m; in Iași, 6.5%; in Brașov, 3.2%. But Brașov is steep exactly in its centre: within 2 km of Piața Sfatului, the Council Square, 13.0% of the streets are steeper than 8%, and beyond that the city has spread across a plain. Iași and Cluj-Napoca are the other way round: within 2 km of their Piața Unirii, only 4.7% and 4.0%; their steep streets climb through the hillside districts.
Same distance, different climb
From the railway station in Iași, the old capital of Moldavia in Romania's north-east, Copou Park and the Palace of Culture are almost the same distance on foot: 2,069 m and 1,916 m by the shortest route. To Copou, the hill north of the centre with the city's oldest park, you climb 30.9 floors; to the Palace, 12.1. On a flat map the two walks look the same.
Even the same walk is not the same climb there and back. From Piața Unirii, Cluj-Napoca's main square, to Zorilor, the hillside district of tower blocks south of the centre, is 2,158 m. Going, you climb 30.4 floors; coming back, 2.8. Tobler's hiking function, which slows the step with the slope, gives 30 minutes there and 25 back.
And in Brașov, the shortest walk from Șchei to Răcădău, the one at the top, includes 1,420 m of forest paths and tracks and 166 m of stairs. It is a hike, not a stroll through town; on a flat map the two walks look the same.
The city, coloured by floors
Every street, pavement, path and flight of stairs is coloured by how many floors it climbs per 500 m, over relief from the same elevation model. Tap anywhere on the map: you get the slope of the street at that point and can start or end a walk there. The walk appears on the map, from the side and in numbers, next to the gentlest detour if there is one.
The + and − buttons or two fingers zoom the map; with a mouse, drag it. The scroll wheel zooms after your first click on the map.
Your walk, in floors and minutes
Pick two points on the map, or two landmarks from the lists. Minutes come from Tobler's hiking function, which slows the step going up and on steep descents; the comparison is a walk on level ground at 5 km per hour. The gentle detour is the route for which its length plus 40 times its climb and descent adds up to the least: a chosen trade-off, not a law.
The steepest named streets
Named streets within each municipality, of at least 150 m, ranked by how many floors you climb or come down per 500 m. Each street keeps the lower of two measurements, on the model's raw surface and on its local minimum, because a surface model can both invent slope and hide it. Stairs and paths stay out of the ranking.
Brașov
| Street | Length (m) | Floors per 500 m | Mean grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strada Valea Rece | 237 | 26.7 | 16.0% |
| Strada Warthe | 300 | 22.8 | 13.7% |
| Strada Colțul Putinarilor | 716 | 21.8 | 13.1% |
| Strada Printre Grădini | 663 | 21.8 | 13.1% |
| Strada Vrancei | 154 | 21.6 | 13.0% |
| Strada Cetățuia | 196 | 21.2 | 12.7% |
Mapped stairs in the municipality, as far as the map reaches: 7,321 m.
Cluj-Napoca
| Street | Length (m) | Floors per 500 m | Mean grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strada Alexandru Donici | 209 | 28.9 | 17.4% |
| Strada Ion Neculce | 232 | 27.5 | 16.5% |
| Strada Breaza | 664 | 19.7 | 11.8% |
| Strada C. A. Rosetti | 361 | 19.7 | 11.8% |
| Strada Aron Florian | 150 | 19.1 | 11.5% |
| Strada Bicaz | 413 | 18.9 | 11.3% |
Mapped stairs in the municipality, as far as the map reaches: 11,896 m.
Iași
| Street | Length (m) | Floors per 500 m | Mean grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strada Cerchez | 334 | 22.7 | 13.6% |
| Strada Vulpe | 153 | 22.3 | 13.4% |
| Strada Spiru Haret | 341 | 19.7 | 11.8% |
| Strada Urcușului | 599 | 19.7 | 11.8% |
| Strada Caraiman | 264 | 19.3 | 11.6% |
| Strada Râpei | 310 | 19.0 | 11.4% |
Mapped stairs in the municipality, as far as the map reaches: 7,062 m.
Method and sources
The network comes from OpenStreetMap (the Geofabrik extract for Romania of 30 October 2026), over each city's map rectangle, with the fields and forests around it: every way tagged highway except motorways and trunk roads, roads only planned or under construction, and ways closed to pedestrians or private. In all, 4,977 km, of which 4,065 km are streets, lanes and footways. Street statistics stop at each municipality's boundary (ANCPI, 2025), as far as the map reaches. Stairs are part of the walks, because people use them, but not of the street statistics.
Height comes from the Copernicus GLO-30 model, in 30 m cells. It is a surface model: it catches trees and roofs. So street level is approximated by the local minimum of the nine surrounding cells, and every node of the network gets a height. The colour on the map is the slope measured over 60 m along the street. Against OpenStreetMap points that carry a height, the heights used are typically (median) 1.7 m out in Iași (6 points), 6.5 m in Cluj-Napoca (19) and 13.5 m in Brașov (29, many on forested summits).
A floor is 3 m. A walk's climb is the sum of every rise from one node to the next. Walking time uses Tobler's hiking function (1993). The shortest walk and the gentle detour are computed on the same network with the same heights in the page and when it is built, and the two calculations give the same figures for all 90 pairs of landmarks.
One limit really matters: at 30 m, short and very steep pitches come out gentler than they are, and in forest the model can add or take away a few metres, so the errors run both ways. Paths are taken as OpenStreetMap draws them: the map does not know whether they are lit, muddy or closed at night.
On the same slope
Bucharest isn't flat either: the Colentina lakes as a staircase, and the height of your street.
Barcelona's shared bikes all roll down to the sea: the same slope, seen from the saddle.
Your tower block's shadow: the other measure that changes a day without appearing on a map.