Catalog
Hadrian's Wall ran 73 miles across northern England, from Segedunum at Wallsend on the Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway, begun in AD 122 under Emperor Hadrian. Six stops, from Chesters and Housesteads to Vindolanda and Birdoswald, show how it was built, changed and garrisoned. The route follows the wall west, from Roman forts to the Solway shore. The exact western end of the wall near Bowness is not known.
Julius Caesar's last decade runs from the siege of Alesia in Gaul through the Rubicon, Pharsalus in Greece and besieged Alexandria to the Curia of Pompey in Rome, where he died on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Six stops follow the Gallic Wars, the civil war and the assassination. Where the exact site is debated, the pins say so.
Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's most famous swordsman, moves through this route from the Sekigahara campaign of 1600 to the duel on Ganryū Island, Osaka Castle, Kumamoto Castle and the cave of Reigandō, where he wrote The Book of Five Rings. The route follows the biography stop by stop, from a village birthplace that sources place in two provinces to the cave where he spent his last years. Several details, including his role at Sekigahara and Osaka, are debated or rest on later accounts.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned real places into levels: the Brooklyn Banks in New York, Venice Beach, Philadelphia's Love Park, a Tijuana arena, Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville and Alcatraz Island. The route follows Pro Skater 2 and Pro Skater 4 from city plaza to island prison, and says what each spot is like in real life. Two pins are approximate where the game names a city but not the exact spot.
Watch Dogs: Legion is set in a fictionalised near-future London, and its story runs through the Palace of Westminster, New Scotland Yard, The Shard (renamed the Nexus Tower), Nine Elms and the Tower of London. The hacker group DedSec fights a surveillance state built by the private military company Albion. This route follows the story from the bomb plot at Parliament to the showdown at the Tower. The game remakes London, so pins mark real landmarks and districts, not in-game buildings.
Detroit: Become Human is set in a near-future Detroit, 2038, where androids work and revolt among real landmarks like the Spirit of Detroit, the Monument to Joe Louis and Belle Isle. The route follows six places where the game meets the real city, from downtown sculptures and Eastern Market murals to the suburb of Ferndale, the Packard plant and Belle Isle. The game is an approximation, not a recreation, so several stops are marked approximate or fictional.
Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia: Tara lies about five miles outside Jonesboro, and Scarlett O'Hara's Atlanta runs along Peachtree Street. The depot, Five Points and Oakland Cemetery are real Atlanta places the story names. The route follows the novel from the eve of the Civil War through the depot and Five Points in the fall of Atlanta in 1864, and ends at the Margaret Mitchell House, where the book was written.
Veniamin Kaverin's The Two Captains is set in Pskov (the book's "Ensk"), Moscow, Leningrad and the Arctic, following Sanya, a mute boy who grows into an Arctic pilot and sets out to prove what happened to a lost polar expedition. The route follows the book from a flooded yard in Pskov to the orphanages of Moscow, the Leningrad blockade, the archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya and Polyarny's Square of Two Captains. Moscow, Leningrad and Severnaya Zemlya are city- or region-level pins, since the book names no exact addresses there.
Beatrix Potter's tales are set in the real Lake District: Mr McGregor's garden at Lingholm near Derwentwater, Owl Island on St Herbert's Island, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's home on Catbells, and the village and farm of Near Sawrey, including Hill Top. The route follows five places from Peter Rabbit in 1901 to the Hill Top tales of 1907 and 1908, moving from the shores of Derwentwater to the house Potter bought in 1905. Some pins mark an area, not a single spot.
The Shire is partly Birmingham: Tolkien said Sarehole Mill and its pond inspired the Mill at Hobbiton, and the wooded Moseley Bog beside it fed the ancient forests of his books. Both lie in the suburbs of Birmingham, England. The route follows Tolkien from his childhood at Sarehole and Moseley Bog, past Perrott's Folly in Edgbaston, to North Oxford, where he wrote The Hobbit, and the Eagle and Child pub, where the Inklings met. Some links are Tolkien's own words; the Folly is only a suggestion.
Philip Pullman's Jordan College is a fictional Oxford college that borrows from Exeter College, with the Gyptians moored in Jericho and the trilogy's last promise made on a bench in the Oxford Botanic Garden. Film and TV shot Jordan at Christ Church and New College. The route follows Lyra from her home college to the canal and the garden, with the film and series stand-ins. Jordan itself is invented, so some pins mark real stand-ins.
Hans Christian Andersen's Denmark runs from a cobbler's house in Odense to the Royal Danish Theatre, the colourful quay of Nyhavn and the bronze Little Mermaid on Copenhagen's Langelinie. The route follows the shoemaker's son who left Odense at 14 to become an actor; a theatre colleague told him he was a poet instead. Two Odense houses, three Copenhagen landmarks and a ride at Tivoli show where his life and his stories touch the map. The birthplace house is traditionally identified, not proven.
Astrid Lindgren's Pippi, Emil and the children of Bullerbyn trace back to Näs and Sevedstorp near Vimmerby, to the Gibberyd farm that played Katthult, and to Mariannelund, where Emil heads for the doctor. The route runs from the author's birthplace through the village that served as the model for Bullerbyn to the film farm and the theme park. Katthult and Bullerbyn are story places; the pins mark their real stand-ins.
Selma Lagerlöf's Nils Holgersson flies over Sweden on a goose's back, from the castles of Skåne at Vittskövle and Glimmingehus to the cliffs of Kullaberg, Karlskrona, Öland and Stockholm's Skansen. The novel takes a tiny boy across all the historical provinces of Sweden. This route follows six real places from its southern chapters to the capital, with the scene the book sets at each. Ottenby is approximate.
Goethe's Faust sends its hero from the student tavern of Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig to the witches' mountain of the Brocken in the Harz, then on to ancient Greece around Farsala, Sparta and Arcadia. The route follows Mephistopheles' bargain across Faust I and II, from the drunken revelers of Leipzig to the Walpurgis Night on the Brocken and the classical world of Helen of Troy. Leipzig and the Brocken are real places in the play; the Greek stops are stage settings with approximate pins.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set on the Greek island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia) in the Second World War, and the 2001 film shot it around Sami, Antisamos Beach and Myrtos Beach. The route follows the film's scenes from the opening feast at a ruined monastery to the seafront built as Argostoli, the Italian camp, the mine on the beach, a partisan hideout and the mountain ambush. Much of the film was made on sets that were dismantled afterwards, so some stops are approximate.
Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk is set in Prague, in the pub U Kalicha on Na Bojišti, and in Tábor, Putim, České Budějovice and Bruck an der Leitha, on Švejk's way to the front. The route follows Švejk from his Prague local, by train and on foot through South Bohemia, to the town on the Austria–Hungary border where the regiment is stationed.
Proust's Combray is the village of Illiers, his Balbec is the seaside resort of Cabourg, and his narrator's walks lead through the Champs-Élysées in Paris and on to Venice. The route follows five places from the novel across its volumes, from the madeleine memory in Combray to a trip to Venice with the narrator's mother. Most pins are approximate, since Proust blends real places into invented ones.
Jules Verne's novel sends Dr. Samuel Ferguson across Africa in a balloon filled with hydrogen, from Zanzibar past Lake Victoria, Lake Chad and Timbuktu to the Senegal River and Saint-Louis. The route follows seven places from the book in order, from the departure port to the Nile source, the desert crossing and the falls of Gouina where the Victoria is lost. Verne's Africa is a nineteenth-century view, and the novel's pins are broad: most marks are areas, not exact spots.
Dan Brown's Origin is set across Spain: Edmond Kirsch's reveal at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, a chase through Gaudí's Casa Milà and Sagrada Família in Barcelona, a finale at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and a royal palace in Madrid. Robert Langdon and curator Ambra Vidal race to broadcast a dead billionaire's discovery. The route starts at Montserrat Abbey and follows the story through six real places, most of which you can visit.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is set in Scotland, from a heath near Forres and Glamis Castle to Dunsinane Hill. Its thane titles, coronation and a marching wood all belong to real names on the map. The real Macbeth ruled from 1040 to 1057, and the play takes liberties with him. The route follows the story from the witches' prophecy to the final duel, through Glamis, Cawdor, Scone, the Birnam Oak and Dunsinane. Several places carry the play's names without staging its scenes, and each stop says so.
Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, The Taming of the Shrew in Padua and The Merchant of Venice in Venice: three cities of northern Italy, from Juliet's courtyard to the Rialto and the Ghetto. The route visits five stops, two tied to the star-crossed lovers, one student comedy and two Venetian money-lending scenes. Several sites are traditional identifications rather than proven settings, and each stop says how firmly the place is tied to the play.
Inspector Morse is set and filmed in Oxford, from the Randolph Hotel and the Ashmolean Museum to the Bodleian Library and Exeter College, where the detective's final episode was shot. Colin Dexter's Morse novels became a 1987 to 2000 ITV series, and the prequel Endeavour returned to the same city. This route follows six places tied to the detective, from his student past to his last case.
Hanasaku Iroha is set in the fictional spa town of Yunosagi, modelled on Yuwaku Onsen in Kanazawa, with a station borrowed from Nishigishi. Follow Ohana from her grandmother's inn to the lantern festival. The five stops cover the spa town, the demolished hotel that inspired Kissuisō, the rival inn, the station and the real Bonbori Festival. Several models have since closed or changed, so this is as much a fan trail as a set of sites.