Vermeer's Delft is a short walk through the Dutch city where Johannes Vermeer was baptized, painted and was buried. The route runs from the Nieuwe Kerk and the Vermeer Centre to the Paardenmarkt, the Vlamingstraat of The Little Street, a view of the skyline from the south, and the Oude Kerk.
The stops follow his life, from baptism in 1632 and the guild in 1653 to the 1654 explosion and his burial in 1675. The exact site of The Little Street is still debated.
Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam from 1631 to his death in 1669, and his story runs from the Rembrandt House Museum and the Rijksmuseum's Night Watch to the Oude Kerk, Rozengracht, Westerkerk and Rembrandtplein.
The route follows the painter from the Jodenbreestraat house he bought in 1639, through his wife Saskia's burial, bankruptcy and the move to the Jordaan, to his rented grave in 1669. Several stops can still be visited today.
The first transcontinental railroad began at the Sacramento waterfront in 1863, climbed through Dutch Flat and Donner Pass, and ended at Promontory Summit, Utah, where the Golden Spike was driven on 10 May 1869.
The route follows the Central Pacific's eastward build from California: the groundbreaking, Judah's Sierra survey, the granite labour of Chinese workers and the final ceremony. Some stops are approximate.
Captain Alatriste is set in Madrid, from the Plaza Mayor and the House of the Seven Chimneys to the Prado, where Velázquez's The Surrender of Breda hangs, and from the siege of Breda to Seville. Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novels follow a Spanish sword for hire and his young squire Íñigo Balboa.
The route walks the Madrid of the first two books, follows the army to Breda in the third, and ends in Seville with The King's Gold. Breda and Seville are approximate pins; the Madrid stops can be visited.
A baker's oven in Pudding Lane, a gale from the east and a city of timber and pitch: in four days in September 1666 the fire destroyed medieval London, including Old St Paul's. Samuel Pepys watched it from the Tower, from the river and from a church tower, and wrote it all down.
The route follows the fire from its first spark on Sunday morning to its end on Wednesday, then to the Monument and the Golden Boy that remember it. Where the sources give only an area, such as the refugee camps at Moorfields, the pin marks it loosely.
