diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f5148c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+# OSMParser
+
+OSMParser is a C++ library for reading and parsing OSM XML data.
+It uses tinyxml2 to read map data from a file and creates a C++ object to store all relevant data.
+
+## OSMParser does
+* extract all nodes, ways, relations from the XML file
+* tag each node, way, relation accordingly
+* make it easy to retrieve references (`nd`- and `member`-tags are stored as pointers)
+
+## OSMParser does not
+* render map data
+* assemble relations like multipolygons
+* query map data
+
+To see OSMParser in action check out my [related project](https://github.com/Lauchmelder23/MapViewer)
\ No newline at end of file