Catalog
Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" put the American West in southern Spain. Their Almería desert towns and the sets built for those films still stand. The route follows the desert and the white village of Los Albaricoques through three Leone films: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in the West. One stop lies over the border in Granada province.
Pedro Almodóvar has shot the majority of his films in Madrid, and Madrid's tourism office lists the exact streets, bars and squares where his scenes happened. The route follows eight filming spots in order of release, from the El Rastro bar of Labyrinth of Passion in 1982 to the Comendadoras square of Parallel Mothers in 2021, with one detour to Almagro in La Mancha for Volver.
Federico García Lorca was born in a farming village in the Granada vega and wrote his rural plays in the family's summer house on the city's edge. In August 1936, weeks into the Civil War, he was arrested in Granada and killed near Víznar. The route follows his life from the birthplace to the orchard house, then the last days in 1936 and the memorials in the hills. The exact place of his death and grave is still disputed, and the final stops are marked as approximate or speculative.
Clarín's novel hides Oviedo behind the name Vetusta, a provincial capital of gossip, piety and boredom where Ana Ozores, the Regenta, is slowly worn down. It begins with the Magistral watching the town through a telescope and ends with Ana fainting in his chapel. The route follows seven scenes from the tower to the duel and the confessional, and ends at the modern statue of Ana. Spanish guides tie some scenes to real Oviedo; where they do not, the pin is approximate or absent.
Macondo is not on any map, but its author grew up on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Gabriel García Márquez was raised in Aracataca by grandparents who treated the extraordinary as perfectly natural, and that deadpan voice became the novel. The route runs from Riohacha, where the Buendías begin, through the marsh and sierra country around Macondo to the railway, the banana company and the massacre, and ends in Mexico City, where the book was written. Macondo itself is fictional, so its stops are real stand-ins.
Twenty years after a nuclear war, the survivors of Moscow live in the Metro, and a young man named Artyom must carry a warning from his home station across the whole network. The novel and the game built on it use real station names, so you can follow Artyom's trip on an ordinary city map. The route runs from VDNKh in the north through Kitay-gorod, Paveletskaya and Kievskaya to the Ostankino Tower. The book and the game differ in places; where they do, the text says so. The library stop is a likely match, not a named place.
Andrei Tarkovsky's Zone, a fenced-off wilderness where a guide takes a writer and a professor toward a Room said to grant wishes, was largely shot around Tallinn, Estonia, among abandoned hydropower plants, a power station and an old chemical works. This route follows the film's story through those places: the factory and power plant seen before the Zone, the gate, the river plants where the journey was shot, a highway bridge and the power station that smokes behind the final homecoming. Exact spots are often unrecorded, so most pins are approximate.
Gaidai's 1968 comedy The Diamond Arm films Istanbul in Baku's Icheri Sheher and Shirvanshahs' Palace, and its home town in Sochi and Adler. One watermelon rind, one "Damn it!", and the economist wears a smugglers' plaster cast full of jewels. The route follows the film across its filming sites: the old streets and palace of Baku that play Istanbul, then the southern coast and a Moscow wasteland that play the heroes' home town. Only the Baku and Kiselyov Rock stops are pinned to a specific place; the rest are approximate.
Danila Bagrov comes home from the First Chechen War, goes to look for his older brother in Saint Petersburg and ends up a hitman by accident. In the sequel he is in Moscow and then Chicago, chasing the men who threaten a dead friend's twin brother. The route follows Danila through Vitebsky Station, the Adamini House, a market and a cemetery in Petersburg, then Moscow and the American stops. Several stops are filming locations standing in for the story's places.
Walking the Streets of Moscow was shot across Moscow itself: Chistoprudny Boulevard, Krivoarbatsky Lane, GUM and Red Square, Gorky Park. Georgiy Daneliya's 1964 comedy follows one day in the lives of Kolya, a night-shift metro builder who cannot stop helping people, and Volodya, a writer just arrived from Siberia. The route follows the film in order through seven places, from Chistoprudny Boulevard to Universitet station. Some scenes were shot in a different street from the one the story names, and the text says where.
On 19 October 1812 the Grande Armée walked out of Moscow after five weeks of occupation. Six weeks later, what was left of it scrambled across the Berezina on two hastily built bridges. In between lay a blocked road, a burning town, a depleted depot, a blizzard and a river full of ice. The route follows six places on that march, from the mined Kremlin through Maloyaroslavets, Vyazma, Smolensk and Krasny to the crossing at Studienka. Most pins mark a town or village, not a battlefield.
In 1961 Yuri Gagarin trained at Moscow's Khodynka Airfield, launched from Baikonur and came down near Engels. Less than two hours in space made the pilot a worldwide celebrity; his capsule is kept in a museum in Korolev City. This route follows Yuri Gagarin from the training ground at Moscow's Khodynka Airfield to the launch pad at Baikonur, the field in the Saratov region where he came down, the Kremlin ceremony and the museum that keeps his capsule. The museum pin marks the Energia company site rather than the museum itself.
Tolstoy's Last Journey follows the flight of November 1910: at 82 he left Yasnaya Polyana in secret, passed through Optina Monastery and Shamordino Convent, and died at Astapovo station ten days later. It covers six stops in the Tula, Kaluga and Lipetsk regions. Three stops are approximate: two railway stations pinned by map search, and Astapovo, pinned on its village.
In the spring of 1890 the playwright and doctor Anton Chekhov left Moscow, crossed Siberia and sailed to Sakhalin, a convict island north of Japan, to count its inhabitants one by one. He kept the plan secret until January, travelled 82 days across Siberia, and came home months later by sea. The route follows his way from his Moscow house through Tomsk, Irkutsk and the Amur to the penal posts of Sakhalin and back to Vladivostok. Several pins mark whole towns, because Chekhov's lodgings are not recorded.
In Gogol's Petersburg nothing is what it seems: the grandest street is a liar, a nose walks about in a state councillor's uniform, and a dead clerk tears coats off passers-by. Three of his stories share one city, and most of their stops can still be walked. The route runs along Nevsky Prospekt and its neighbouring streets, from the painter's and the lieutenant's chases in Nevsky Prospekt, through The Nose's barber, cathedral, bridge, garden and shop, to the Kalinkin Bridge where the ghost of The Overcoat is said to prowl. A few stops are approximate, since Gogol seldom gives house numbers.
The Twelve Chairs crosses the Soviet Union: Moscow's Prague restaurant, the Proval cave in Pyatigorsk, the Darial Gorge and Yalta. A former nobleman and a con man chase twelve dining chairs; Syzran and Kozmodemyansk are candidate models for the invented Stargorod and Vasyuki. The route marks six stops; Stargorod and Vasyuki are invented, so their pins are only candidate stand-ins.
Sound! Euphonium follows the Kitauji High School concert band, and its story is set in Uji, Kyoto. The route follows Kumiko's commute on the Keihan Uji Line, crosses Uji Bridge, joins the Agata Festival and climbs Daikichiyama for the view of town. The school itself is fictional, so the route pins a real station in its place.
Takumi Fujiwara delivers tofu every morning in his father's old Toyota AE86, and without knowing it he becomes the fastest downhill driver in Gunma. Shuichi Shigeno's street racing manga sends him against rival teams from mountain after mountain. Some names are fictionalized, but all of the locations in the series are based on actual places in Japan. The route follows them from Mount Haruna, the real Akina, to Akagi, Myōgi and Irohazaka, then returns to the lake and to the museum that keeps the tofu shop's storefront.
Anohana is set in real Chichibu, Saitama: Hitsujiyama Park, the old Chichibu Bridge, Jōrinji Temple and Muku Shrine. Six childhood friends drift apart after Menma dies, then her ghost asks Jinta to grant a wish, and they gather again in their hometown. The town is real, and the route follows the places the anime shows: the hill and overlook of Hitsujiyama Park, a road beside the railway, two bridges over the Arakawa, the temple where the friends keep gathering, and the festival scaffold where their homemade firework is launched. The secret base itself has no real-life twin.
It rains on Tokyo all summer, and runaway Hodaka Morishima meets Hina Amano, a girl who can pray the sky clear. Makoto Shinkai's film follows them through real corners of the city: a McDonald's in Kabukichō, a rooftop shrine on an abandoned building, a hillside flat, a fireworks festival and a jewellery shop at Shinjuku Station. Seven stops run from Hodaka's home island to Lumine Shinjuku. Several pins mark a district rather than a spot, and Yoyogi Kaikan was demolished in 2019–20, so that stop is a memory.
Ridley Scott's 2005 epic follows Balian, a French blacksmith turned Baron of Ibelin, from his village to Messina, Jerusalem, Kerak, the desert defeat at Hattin and the siege that ends the film. Every stop pairs a scene with the place where it was shot, or with the real place the scene stands for. The film was made in Spain and Morocco, not the Holy Land, so the route moves between sets and history. Where the film departs from the record, the stop says so: the historical Balian was a prominent lord of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a French artisan.
Nioh plays out its dark-fantasy 1600 on real ground: the Tower of London, Kyoto, Sekigahara and Osaka Castle. William Adams, a blond outsider, escapes England and becomes Ieyasu's ally against demons and the alchemist Edward Kelley in Japan's civil wars. The route follows the main campaign and its last two expansions: the Tower of London, Kyoto, Sekigahara, then the Sanada-maru, Tennōji and Osaka Castle. The game is fantasy, so the map shows where its history happened, not where it was filmed or modelled.
Agent 47 has killed his way across the world in the Hitman trilogy, from a Paris fashion show to a skyscraper in Dubai. Behind the levels stand real cities, a real tower and a few real places that inspired invented ones. This route follows nine missions from the 2016 game to Hitman 3. Most venues are fictional, so the pins mark the city or the real place the designers named as a model, and each stop says which.
Fionn mac Cumhaill is the hero of Irish legend who gained all knowledge by burning his thumb on a salmon, saved Tara from a fire-breather and, in folk tales, built the Giant's Causeway to reach a Scottish rival. His stories are tied to real hills, rivers and rocks, many of them still named for him. The route follows his legend from the Boyne of his boyhood through Tara, the Hill of Allen, Slieve Gullion and Benbulben, then to the tall tales of Lough Neagh, the Causeway and Fingal's Cave. Nothing here is history: pins mark where tradition places each tale.