The difference between the top and bottom spans 20 floors — the world’s steepest street where the road seemingly “eats houses”

▲ A photo of Baldwin Street taken using a tilted technique. (Image / Sourced from Wikimedia Commons, the same below)

Travel Center / Comprehensive Report

What on earth is going on? Why do all the houses here seem to be eaten by the road? When people see photos of Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand, many immediately wonder about this. It turns out that Baldwin Street is the steepest street in the world, so the houses are built along the hillside. Visitors taking photos on Baldwin Street also like to deliberately tilt their cameras, creating an optical illusion that the houses are being “eaten.”

Listed by the Guinness World Records as the steepest street in the world, the steepest section of Baldwin Street has a gradient of 35%, meaning that for every 2.86 meters forward, the elevation rises by 1 meter. The entire street is about 350 meters long, and the height difference between the top and the bottom is 70 meters, which is equivalent to a drop of over 20 floors.

▲ Baldwin Street is the most sloped street in the world.

Because of its extremely steep slope, visitors especially love taking commemorative photos here. In addition to shooting from normal angles, when the camera is aligned level with the road surface, the otherwise upright buildings appear as if they are sinking into the ground, which is quite amusing. Taiwan also has many famous mountain roads, so maybe you can try taking photos that make places like Jiufen look like they’re “sinking” too.