1,206-CITY ATLASSOURCE-BACKED CITY REFERENCE
Germany
Compare this sourced profile of Essen, Germany before planning. Stable fields identify the place; confirm current transport, access and opening details with official sources.
01What the data says — and does not say
This page separates the checked GeoNames row for Essen—593,085, Europe/Berlin, and source coordinates—from live travel claims. Those fields identify and compare the record; they do not prove current transport, accessibility, census totals, or a City Atlas Club visit.
02This city's dataset fingerprint
The source row behind Essen is GeoNames ID 2928810. Its recorded administrative path is Duesseldorf District → North Rhine-Westphalia → Germany, and GeoNames classifies the place as a third-order administrative seat. Essen occurs once as a primary city label in this atlas sample; the numeric ID remains the durable source key if names change. The city row itself was updated 2021-07-25; that date belongs to the source record, not to every transport or visitor detail in the real destination.
Within the fixed 1,206-record atlas, Essen ranks 945 by recorded population. Inside the 15 selected Germany entries it ranks 8; inside the 125 entries in its broad region it ranks 83. Its 593,085 population value is 1.00 times the 593,085 median for the country cohort and 0.89 times the 664,046 regional median. Essen sits in the second quarter of this atlas's Germany population cohort. Essen's recorded value stays within one quarter of the country-cohort median used here. These comparisons describe this selected dataset only; they are not current census rankings or official urban-area boundaries.
Essen's three nearest other atlas coordinates are Duisburg at 17.335 km with 504,358 recorded people; Düsseldorf at 30.584 km with 618,685 recorded people; Dortmund at 32.08 km with 588,462 recorded people. The closest-to-farthest distance spread is 14.745 km. Compared with Duisburg, Essen's recorded population is 1.18 times as large. Against Essen, Duisburg follows Duesseldorf District → North Rhine-Westphalia → Germany in the source. Its point has lower latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the same selected Germany cohort, uses the shared Europe/Berlin identifier, and carries the same third-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is below Essen's. Against Essen, Düsseldorf follows Duesseldorf District → North Rhine-Westphalia → Germany in the source. Its point has lower latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the same selected Germany cohort, uses the shared Europe/Berlin identifier, and carries first-order administrative seat rather than third-order administrative seat. Its recorded population is above Essen's. Against Essen, Dortmund follows Regierungsbezirk Arnsberg → North Rhine-Westphalia → Germany in the source. Its point has higher latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the same selected Germany cohort, uses the shared Europe/Berlin identifier, and carries the same third-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is below Essen's. Its nearest-neighbor distance ranks 242 of 1,206 from shortest to longest in the same snapshot. Essen's nearest-coordinate gap falls between the tightest tenth and quarter of the atlas. This pattern can reveal whether other catalog references are geographically close, but it cannot establish whether a border crossing is possible or practical, or whether rail, road, fare, or journey-time connections exist. Read as one record signature, GeoNames 2928810, the coordinate pair 51.4566 / 7.0123, country rank 8 of 15, and neighbor GeoNames 2934691 at 17.335 km bind Essen to a reproducible comparison. That combined key distinguishes the row; it is not a recommendation or evidence of a physical connection.
Essen's reference point is 51.4566° north and 7.0123° east. The IANA identifier Europe/Berlin is shared by 15 city rows in this catalog, while the GeoNames class PPLA3 is shared by 60 rows. Essen's row carries both second- and first-order administrative labels. Essen's point falls in the higher-latitude coordinate band used by this atlas's row checks. Essen's time-zone field defines the narrower catalog cohort; its place class is shared more broadly. GeoNames supplies no elevation for Essen, so the profile preserves that missing value instead of guessing terrain. Together these fields form a reproducible identity check for this page, not a claim about walkability, climate or accessibility.
03Nearby atlas references
Essen's closest other entries in this atlas are Duisburg (17.335 km), Düsseldorf (30.584 km), Dortmund (32.08 km).
04Verify before you book
Before visiting Essen, confirm changing decisions with current first-party sources:
Read how City Atlas Club verifies changing travel facts →05Sources and freshness
GeoNames updated the row 2021-07-25; the atlas checked the dataset 2026-08-04. Available Wikidata fields were verified in the same run.
GeoNames data: CC BY 4.0. Wikidata labels and descriptions: CC0 1.0.