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BooksApproximate

Tales of the Alhambra: Washington Irving's Granada

Washington Irving came to Granada in 1829 and ended up living in a palace of the Moorish kings. With a 17-year-old local guide named Mateo Ximenes at his elbow, he gathered the legends that became Tales of the Alhambra in 1832. This route follows the book through six places: the gate with the magic hand and key, Irving's rooms, the Hall of Ambassadors, the Court of Lions, the Generalife and the Tower of the Princesses. Several tales are legend as much as history, so the pins mark the places where Irving tells them.

6 locations6/6 visitable

MoviesExact

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Riga as Victorian London

Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin's Soviet Holmes and Watson were made when filming abroad was impossible, so a Riga lane became Baker Street, a Petersburg station became Victoria and a waterfall in Abkhazia became the Reichenbach Falls. The route follows the Lenfilm television films of 1979 to 1986 from the Riga street with the screen 221b to Peterhof, Saint Petersburg, the Gega Waterfall and Tallinn.

6 locations5/6 visitable

GamesSpeculative

Assassin's Creed: The Holy Land of the Third Crusade

Assassin's Creed (2007) recreates the Holy Land of 1191: Masyaf, Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, with Solomon's Temple and Richard's camp at Arsuf. Altaïr loses his rank after a botched mission and wins it back one target at a time: nine men in three cities, all secretly Templars. The route follows the story from the Temple in Jerusalem to the Assassins' fortress of Masyaf, through Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, to a duel in King Richard's camp. The game's cities are rebuilt for play, so every pin marks the real place the scene is anchored to.

6 locations2/6 visitable

HistoryApproximate

The Great Fire of London: Pudding Lane to Pye Corner

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.

9 locations9/9 visitable

HistoryApproximate

The Spanish Armada, 1588: From the Lizard to Streedagh

In the summer of 1588 a Spanish fleet appeared off Cornwall with a plan to join Parma's army. Beacons carried the news to London, the English fleet came out of Plymouth, and within weeks fireships, a day of heavy gunnery and autumn storms had ended the plan. The route follows the campaign through seven places, from the first sighting to a beach in County Sligo where three ships broke up. Most of the fighting was at sea, so the pins mark the nearest coast landmark, and the story of Drake and his game of bowls at Plymouth is labelled as legend.

7 locations5/7 visitable

HistoryApproximate

Lincoln's Assassination: Booth's Flight

On the night of 14 April 1865 John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington and escaped on horseback. Lincoln died the next morning in a house across the street; Booth was hunted down twelve days later in a Virginia barn, in what was then the largest manhunt in US history. The route follows both threads in turn: the theater and the room where Lincoln died, then Booth's road south through the Navy Yard Bridge, a Maryland tavern, a doctor's farmhouse and a swamp, to the farm where it ended.

7 locations4/7 visitable

HistorySpeculative

Paul Revere's Midnight Ride: Boston to Concord

On the night of 18 April 1775 Paul Revere was rowed across the Charles River, got a horse in Charlestown and rode west to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were on the move. He left three accounts of that night, and this route follows them rather than the poem. It runs through nine places, from his house in North Square and the lanterns at Old North Church to the pasture in Lincoln where a British patrol stopped him, and on to Concord, which Samuel Prescott reached without him. Where a spot is only traditional, the stop says so.

9 locations7/9 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Apollo 11: From Pad 39A to the Pacific

On 16 July 1969 a Saturn V lifted the Apollo 11 crew off a Florida launch pad; eight days later their capsule dropped into the Pacific. In between, the first people walked on another world while an estimated 600 million watched on Earth. The route follows the mission through six stops: the launch pad in Florida, Mission Control in Houston, Tranquility Base on the Moon, the Australian dish that carried the moonwalk pictures, the splashdown and the capsule's museum home. The Moon stop has no pin because the map shows Earth only; its lunar coordinates are given in the text.

6 locations3/6 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Livingstone and Stanley: From Zanzibar to Ujiji

On 10 November 1871, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, the journalist Henry M. Stanley took off his hat in front of a crowd and said, as he tells it in his own book, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" The explorer many thought dead had been found, after nearly eight months on the road from the coast. The route follows Stanley's account, How I Found Livingstone, over eight stops: from Zanzibar and Bagamoyo through Mpwapwa, Tabora and the Malagarasi to Ujiji, then up the lake to Mugere and back to the parting at Tabora. Stanley's camps are rarely identifiable today, so every pin is approximate.

8 locations3/8 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Hillary and Tenzing: The Road to Everest, 1953

At 11:30 a.m. on 29 May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Mount Everest, the first people confirmed to have done so. They were part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt, which in the end amounted to over four hundred men, including twenty Sherpa guides and 362 porters. The route follows that expedition from winter training in Wales through Kathmandu, Thyangboche, Base Camp, the Khumbu Icefall, the Western Cwm and the South Col to the summit, then to the telegraph runner's stop at Namche Bazaar. Pins above Base Camp mark the terrain, not the exact camps of 1953.

9 locations4/9 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Amundsen and Scott: The Race to the South Pole

In 1910 two expeditions set out for the bottom of the world. Roald Amundsen's Norwegians, masters of skis and sled dogs, reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Robert Falcon Scott's party arrived on 17 January 1912, 34 days later, to find a Norwegian tent already standing. Amundsen sent his news from Hobart; Scott's party of five died on the return journey. The route follows both men from Cardiff and Madeira to their bases, up their two glaciers, to the Pole and to the endings: Amundsen's cables from Hobart and Scott's last camp. Antarctic pins mark glaciers and bays, not camps, and the ice has moved since.

10 locations1/10 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Captain Cook's First Voyage: Round the World in the Endeavour

On 26 August 1768 the Endeavour left Plymouth with 94 people aboard, bound for Tahiti to watch Venus cross the Sun. Almost three years later she anchored off the Kent coast again, having reached New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, and with many of her people lost to disease on the way home. The route follows James Cook's own journal and modern accounts through ten stops, from the anchorage at Plymouth to the Great Barrier Reef and Batavia. Dates follow modern accounts, which sometimes differ by a day from the journal.

10 locations7/10 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Lewis and Clark: Up the Missouri to the Pacific

In May 1804 William Clark and about 30 others left a winter camp on the Mississippi and turned up the Missouri, the first stage of an expedition sent to cross the newly acquired western part of the country. Captains Meriwether Lewis and Clark kept journals, and many of their entries are quoted here in their own spelling. The route follows them from Camp Dubois past a sergeant's grave, a tense standoff with the Teton Sioux, a winter at Fort Mandan, the Great Falls, the Continental Divide and the snowbound Lolo Trail to the Pacific, then home by way of Clark's signature on Pompeys Pillar. Where a camp is lost to the river or to time, the pin marks the nearest place you can visit.

11 locations10/11 visitable

BooksFictional

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Down the Mississippi

Huck Finn fakes his own murder and, with Jim, who has run away from slavery, takes a raft down the Mississippi. Their goal is Cairo, where Jim would be a free man the minute he saw it. They miss it in the fog and drift on into slave country, past a feud, two con men and a farm with the book's last twist. Twain built St. Petersburg from his boyhood town of Hannibal. Most places in the novel are invented, so each pin marks a real landmark or stand-in, and the Grangerfords' country and Bricksville stay off the map.

7 locations4/7 visitable

HistoryApproximate

Joan of Arc: From Domrémy to Rouen

Joan of Arc’s road runs from her family’s house in Domrémy, through Vaucouleurs, Chinon, Orléans and Reims, to Rouen, where she was burned in 1431. A peasant girl, she persuaded a doubting captain and then a doubting prince to give her an army, lifted the siege of Orléans in 1429 and stood beside Charles at his coronation. The route follows her through nine places, from her family's house in Domrémy to the square in Rouen where she was burned. Where a building was rebuilt or the exact spot is unrecorded, the stop says so.

9 locations5/9 visitable

BooksApproximate

Pride and Prejudice: Longbourn to Pemberley

Netherfield Park is let at last, and Austen's novel follows Elizabeth Bennet from her family's village to a Kent parsonage and on to Derbyshire. The houses of the book are described rather than mapped, so this route follows the real places where the 2005 film and the 1995 BBC series found them. Nine stops follow the story in order, from Longbourn to the inn at Lambton. Each pin is a real filming site standing in for a place in the book; only Gracechurch Street is the real London street the novel itself names.

9 locations5/9 visitable

BooksApproximate

Murder on the Orient Express: From Aleppo to the Snowdrift

Murder on the Orient Express runs from Aleppo through Istanbul and Belgrade to a snowdrift near Vinkovci. Poirot's train is stuck there with a murdered man aboard and the killer still on it. The route follows the story from Aleppo station through Istanbul, where Poirot gets his telegram and his berth, and Belgrade to the snowdrift near Vinkovci. It ends with the 1932 kidnapping that gave Christie her plot. Most pins are indicative: the novel names few exact places.

6 locations1/6 visitable

BooksFictional

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Across Dartmoor

The Hound of the Baskervilles takes Sherlock Holmes across Dartmoor: Cabell's tomb at Buckfastleigh, the ten-thirty train from Paddington, Princetown's prison and Hound Tor. A spectral hound stalks the moor. The route runs from the grave that may have inspired the legend and the ten-thirty train from Paddington to the convict prison at Princetown, the mire, the tors and the Stapletons' house. Baskerville Hall and Merripit House exist only in the book, so their pins mark a stand-in or nothing at all.

7 locations5/7 visitable

BooksApproximate

Les Misérables: From Digne to the Barricades

Les Misérables on a map: Jean Valjean's road from the bishop's house at Digne to Montreuil-sur-Mer, the Thénardiers' inn at Montfermeil, Marius's bench in the Luxembourg, the barricade of June 1832 and the sewers and bridges of Paris. Victor Hugo's 1862 novel follows the convict from the night a bishop's kindness turns him towards good to the street fighting in the capital. Hugo hid two of the towns behind initials and the wine-shop barricade has been built over, so only the Luxembourg Garden is pinned exactly; the other stops mark real places standing in for the book's.

7 locations6/7 visitable

GamesApproximate

Assassin's Creed III: The American Revolution

Assassin's Creed III crosses the American Revolution from London's Covent Garden opera house to Boston's Old State House, Bunker Hill and the Battery in Manhattan. In 1754 the Templar Haytham Kenway carries a stolen key to the colonies; his son Connor becomes the Assassin who hunts him through the war. Assassin's Creed III builds its America from real maps, and almost every stop can still be walked: the opera house in Covent Garden, the Old State House and Boston Harbor, the green at Lexington and the bridge at Concord, the Bunker Hill battlefield, the Valley Forge encampment, the Monmouth battlefield, and the Battery at the foot of Manhattan, where the war ends.

9 locations9/9 visitable

MoviesExact

Ghostbusters: From the Library to Spook Central

In 1984 Ghostbusters turned real New York addresses into a haunted city: the New York Public Library's marble reading room, the Hook & Ladder 8 firehouse in Tribeca and 55 Central Park West, the apartment block that becomes Spook Central. The Sedgewick Hotel was filmed at the Millennium Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles. Most of the exterior landmarks survive and can be visited, though the Sedgewick Hotel's interiors were filmed on the other side of the country, at a grand downtown Los Angeles hotel. This route follows the film's story from the first library ghost to the rooftop battle with Gozer.

6 locations5/6 visitable

GamesFictional

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag: Nassau and the Observatory

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag sets its pirate Caribbean in Havana, Nassau, Kingston and Port Royal. Edward Kenway steals a dead Assassin's name, takes the Jackdaw, builds a brotherhood in Nassau, loses his friends and chases the Observatory, a device that can watch anyone on earth. Black Flag sets all of it in real ports — Havana, Nassau, Kingston, Port Royal — and then leaves the Caribbean for the Maya ruins of Tulum, an island in the Gulf of Guinea and a final scene in London. The route follows Edward from the harbour where Torres's plot starts, through the pirate republic and the governor who ends it, to the Kingston house where Mary Read drops the disguise, the jail at Port Royal, Príncipe, where the Sage is waiting, and Covent Garden. Most stops mark a real landmark in the town the game rebuilds.

8 locations7/8 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle

In December 1831 a 22-year-old Cambridge graduate with a passion for beetles and rocks sailed from Plymouth as an unpaid naturalist on HMS Beagle, a ten-gun survey brig. The voyage was meant to take two years and took five. Charles Darwin came home with crates of fossils, skins and notebooks — and with questions about the islands that would lead him, two decades later, to On the Origin of Species. The route follows the ship around the world in order, using Darwin's own Journal of Researches for dates and details: the volcanic Cape Verde islands, the Brazilian forest, the fossil beds of Argentina, Tierra del Fuego, a great Chilean earthquake, the Galápagos, Cape Town and home to Falmouth.

9 locations4/9 visitable

BooksApproximate

Around the World in Eighty Days: Fogg's Wager

On the evening of 2 October 1872, the punctual and unflappable Phileas Fogg bets his fellow members of the Reform Club £20,000 — half his fortune — that he can go around the world in eighty days, and leaves that same night with his new French valet, Passepartout. On his heels comes Detective Fix, convinced that Fogg is a bank robber on the run. Jules Verne's novel appeared in 1872, when the opening of the Suez Canal and new railways across India and America had made such a race against the timetable just about possible. The route follows the journey eastward in the novel's own dates, from Pall Mall back to Pall Mall.

9 locations7/9 visitable