A true story about your spot
One story about the exact ground under your feet, told from today back through the centuries. About a five-minute read.
Free on iPhone · sign in for 3 digs a month
What happened right where you are standing?
Open Strata, press one button, and about a minute later you are reading the true story of the ground under your feet: who lived there, what stood there before, and the fires, floods and crimes the town would rather forget.
It works anywhere, from a famous square to the corner of your own street, and every fact links to its source.
On a computer? Point your iPhone camera here.
What you get
The dark side too
Disasters, crimes and the dead are part of the record. Strata tells them with their dates, the way the sources do.
How it looked
Old photographs, engravings and paintings of the place itself, wherever they exist.
Every source, linked
Each event carries its date and a link to where it came from, so you can check any of it.
A real dig, from the library
Loures · Portugal
Farmland outside a parish town
This point sits on open ground near Loures, a short walk from a Roman farming estate.
Read the whole dig →This is what the app writes. Press dig on your own street and you get one of these about the ground under your feet.
Three screens. Nothing to learn.
One
Press dig
Stand anywhere and press the one button: a famous square, a bus stop, your own front step. Strata reads your location at that moment and never in the background.
Two
Read what happened here
About a minute later the story is ready. It starts with what you can see and works back through everyone who stood here before you.
Three
Keep it
When you sign in, every dig is saved in your journal and stays readable offline. A trip ends up as a shelf of the places you actually stood. Guest digs are not saved.
Start free
Wanderer · Free
Sign in for 3 digs each 30-day cycle, reading about 100 feet (30 metres) around you. Try one guest dig first; it counts toward your first three.
Monthly Excavator
$6.99/month in the US. Unlimited digs where you stand, out to a quarter mile (400 metres).
Annual Excavator
$49.99/year in the US. The same Excavator access, billed yearly.
Strata VIP Unlimited
$129.99/year in the US. Unlimited digs out to a full mile (1,600 metres), remote digs anywhere on earth, and audio narration.
Prices vary by country; the app and Apple purchase sheet show your price. Subscriptions renew monthly or yearly until cancelled. Unlimited plans are subject to fair use. Reopening your own saved journal reports does not use another dig.
On a computer? Point your iPhone camera here to get Strata.
Take it somewhere new and you stop more. The alley you were cutting through turns out to be the old harbour wall, and the café terrace was a cattle market for four hundred years.
The library on this site is the same writing the app produces, published in full and free to read.
Questions people ask first
What was here before?
Strata answers that for the spot under your feet, not the town you are in — the square, not Sintra; the corner, not the city.
Does it work where nothing famous happened?
Yes, and that is most of the ground there is. Ordinary places have long records: who owned the land, what was built and pulled down, what happened in the street.
Do I need a signal to dig?
Yes for the dig itself. Once a dig is in your journal it stays readable offline.
Is it free?
The app is free to download. Try one guest dig, then sign in for 3 digs each 30-day cycle; your guest dig counts toward the first three. Guest digs are not saved. Excavator and VIP are subscriptions. Digs count even if someone else has opened that ground; reopening your own saved journal reports is free.