The Seven Churches of Revelation lie in western Turkey: Ephesus near Selçuk, Smyrna, Pergamon at Bergama, Thyatira at Akhisar, Sardis, Philadelphia at Alaşehir and Laodicea near Denizli. They are the seven cities addressed in the letters of Revelation 2–3.
This pilgrimage route follows the letters in order, from Ephesus to Laodicea, and sets each message beside what stands on the ground. The sources identify some sites exactly and others only by their modern town.
Saint Paul's missionary journeys run from Paphos in Cyprus through Antioch of Pisidia, Philippi, Athens, Corinth and Ephesus to Malta and Rome, as told in the Acts of the Apostles.
The route follows Paul from his first journey with Barnabas to the shipwreck on Malta and his final years in Rome, with the ruins, hills and basilicas you can still visit.
Several spots, like the Areopagus and Paul's tomb, are traditional identifications, and each stop says how firm the evidence is.
The route from the Varangians to the Greeks ran from Staraya Ladoga by the Volkhov and Lake Ilmen, down the Dnieper past Kyiv and Khortytsia, to Berezan and the Golden Horn of Constantinople. It is the river road that linked the Baltic to the Byzantine capital.
The six stops follow Rurik, Oleg and Sviatoslav along it, through the Primary Chronicle's tales of 862, 882, 907 and 972. Several accounts are legend-tinged, and the stops are not in strict date order because they follow the river.
A Cornish knight fetches an Irish princess for his uncle the king, and a love potion on the ship ruins everything. Tristan and Iseult is a medieval legend told in many versions since the 12th century, and every retelling sets it on a slightly different map.
This route follows the lovers from Tristan's drowned homeland to Dublin, Cornwall and Brittany, ending on the island that carries his name. Almost every site is a tradition rather than a fact, so each pin says how sure it is.
The Travels of Marco Polo runs from Venice and Acre to Kublai Khan's Xanadu, then south to Hangzhou and home again. In 1271 a seventeen-year-old Venetian set out with his father and uncle and did not come home for 24 years.
The route follows the book from Venice and Acre to the Persian Gulf, across the Pamir highlands and the desert to Kublai's summer and winter capitals, south to Hangzhou and the port of Zayton, and home again. Some of the roads are reconstructed by scholars, and Polo sometimes exaggerates, so each stop notes where the evidence is thin.
Mrs Dalloway unfolds in one June day across Westminster, St James's Park, Piccadilly's Hatchards bookshop and Regent's Park. Big Ben marks the hours for Clarissa, preparing her party, and for Septimus, a war veteran; the two never meet.
This route follows the characters through the London they walk, almost all of it still standing. The Dalloways' house, the florist and the doctors are fictional.
