Search inside your own polygon

When the region is neither a box nor a mapped boundary, describe it as a polygon: a list of latitude and longitude pairs.

The query

[out:json][timeout:25];
nwr["amenity"="restaurant"](poly:"40.7644 -73.9730 40.7527 -73.9645 40.7465 -73.9790 40.7583 -73.9876");
out center;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. poly:"lat lon lat lon …" lists the corners, separated by spaces. The polygon closes itself.
2. Order matters: lat before lon, unlike GeoJSON.

Variations

• Polygons with many points make the query long; simplify them first.
• Convert a GeoJSON polygon by swapping each pair to lat lon and joining with spaces.

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.