Hello,
Could you please comment on good practice of tagging church towers? I just added church tower here. I saw a tag building:part, which says that any building= value can also be used as building:part=. There’s a tower:type=church as described here though it does state building= is required, but JOSM would produce “building within building” warning. This was the minimal set of tags that didn’t produce warnings. Please let me know if this is acceptable.
If the church tower is freestanding, i.e. a building of its own, use building=tower/bell_tower. If it’s part of the church itself, use building:part=tower/bell_tower. In both cases, use man_made=tower, plus an appropriate tower:type=* like tower:type=bell_tower. See tower:type=bell_tower.
bell_tower=campanile . There’s 1200 of them in TagInfo, used it about a dozen times, many are free off the church for earthquake risk reasons… if they start wobbling the church goes along.
and yes if attached to the church building, map inclusive outline and tag tower as building:part.
Great, thanks. I will add man_made=tower. Can I just double check that tower:type=bell_tower is preferred to tower:type=church?
When would you use tower:type=church? Are there churches out there without bells that are towers?
I suspect tower:type=bell_tower is more specific so that’s why it’s preferable.
tower:type is referring to man_made=tower, but it is a great mess 
you can add it as well if you like, there is no harm, but building:part has maybe better (generic) support, although there are not so many specific uses for bell towers either: building:part=bell_tower | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
Where did you learn about tower:type=church? It is only used 179 times in the whole world, compared to 44548 uses of tower:type=bell_tower (which is more generic and not specifically referring to churches, but in practise mostly used in this context).
I learnt about church tower from the tower:type wiki. Thanks, I will start using taginfo to get a better idea of common usage.
Oh, this Wiki page tower:type=church was only created a few days ago!
Are there any church towers that are not bell towers?
The wiki page tower:type=* does not even mention church as a possible value
and on the wiki page tower:type=bell_tower tower:type=church is mentioned as a possible tagging mistake.
I’ve run into the same question before,tagging church towers can definitely be a bit tricky. I’ve found using building:part=tower along with tower:type=church works well, especially if the tower is part of a larger church building. Keeps things clean and avoids JOSM warnings.
Now that you mentioned earthquakes and bell towers, I have mapped this tower part that fell to the ground due to an earthquake in 2016 (it’s 2025 and still on the ground). Is the mapping correct? Should I map it differently?
Thanks for pointing this out. I have not noticed this. Next time I will definitely check both taginfo and the dates of wiki pages.