**European Economic Area (EEA) developers**

> [!NOTE]
> If your billing address is in the European Economic Area, effective on 8 July 2025, the [Google
> Maps Platform EEA Terms of Service](https://cloud.google.com/terms/maps-platform/eea) will apply to your use of the Services. [Learn more](https://developers.google.com/maps/comms/eea/faq.md.txt). In addition, certain content from the Map Tiles API will no longer be returned. [Learn more](https://developers.google.com/maps/comms/eea/map-tiles.md.txt).

![Terrain Tile overview](https://developers.google.com/static/maps/documentation/tile/images/terrain_tiles_example.png)Terrain tiles are image tiles that contain hillshade mapping
and contour lines. They include natural features such as vegetation.

## Getting terrain tiles

You can begin making terrain tile requests after you get a session token.
Because a session token applies to the entire session, you don't have to specify
the map options with your tile requests.

The following code sample demonstrates a typical session token request for
terrain tiles.

```json
curl -X POST -d '{
  "mapType": "terrain",
  "language": "en-US",
  "region": "US",
  "layerTypes": ["layerRoadmap"]
}' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
"https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/createSession?key=YOUR_API_KEY"
```

You get terrain tiles by making an HTTPS GET request, as shown in the following
example.

```json
curl "https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/z/x/y?session=YOUR_SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY"
```

## Example tile request

Consider the following example, which requests a single terrain tile with zoom
level 10, with x and y coordinates of (192, 401).

```json
curl "https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/10/192/401?session=YOUR_SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY" --output /tmp/example_tile.png
```

There is no response message from the server in this example. Instead, the tile
just downloads to a local file.

![Terrain Tile download response](https://developers.google.com/static/maps/documentation/tile/images/terrain-example-2.png)

For information about response message headers, see
[Pre-Fetching, Caching, or Storage of Content](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/policies.md.txt#pre-fetching,-caching,-or-storage-of-content).