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.
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.
Under the Tuscan Sun follows Frances, a San Francisco writer, who buys a run-down villa near Cortona. It was shot in Florence, Cortona, Rome, Positano and Montepulciano.
The route runs from the rain at Florence Cathedral through Cortona's square and cinema, a trip to Rome and Positano, and a wedding near Montepulciano. Places are film locations, and the villa is a stand-in for the real Bramasole.
Merchant Ivory's 1985 film of Forster's novel is set in Florence and Surrey and was shot in the Piazza della Signoria, around Fiesole, at Emmetts Garden in Kent and at 18 Stafford Terrace in London.
The route follows Lucy Honeychurch from a Florentine pensione without a view, through a stabbing and a kiss in a poppy field, to an engagement in England that cannot last. The film was shot in ten weeks: four in Italy and six in England.
Bridget Jones's Diary is set and filmed around Borough Market in south London, with Shad Thames, the Royal Courts of Justice and Cornhill on the way. The film moves Bridget from Holland Park to a flat above the Globe pub, where the story begins.
This route follows the film's story through eight London and country locations: the book launch at the ICA, the first date at Shad Thames, the mini-break at Stoke Park, the anniversary party at Syon House and the snowy finale. The film was shot over six weeks in and around London in 2000.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert starts at Sydney's Imperial Hotel in Erskineville, crosses the outback through Broken Hill's Palace Hotel and Coober Pedy, and ends at a casino in Alice Springs and the cliffs of Kings Canyon.
Three performers ride a bus named Priscilla to a four-week booking, and the film was shot at many of the places on the road. This route follows their trip in story order. The exact spot of the breakdown is approximate, and the Coober Pedy and Kings Canyon pins mark the town and the park.
The Devil Wears Prada is set in New York and Paris, and was shot in both: the office tower that plays Runway's parent company, the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse, the American Museum of Natural History and the Fontaines de la Concorde, where Andy drops her phone.
The route follows her from the job interview to the Paris trip and back to the newsroom where she ends up. The crew spent only two days in the real Paris, filming exteriors only.
Hitchcock's North by Northwest starts at the Plaza Hotel and the United Nations in New York, rolls through Grand Central and Chicago's LaSalle Street Station, and ends on Mount Rushmore. Its crop-duster scene, set in Indiana, was filmed near Wasco, California.
An advertising man is mistaken for a spy who does not exist and has to run across the country. The route follows him stop by stop, from the Oak Room to the Chicago hotel where Hitchcock stayed, and says which scenes were real locations and which were sets or stand-ins.
Out of Africa was filmed around Nairobi and the Ngong Hills in Kenya, with the Danish scenes shot at Castle Rising in Norfolk, England. Sydney Pollack's 1985 film, based on Karen Blixen's memoir, uses the Muthaiga Country Club, the coffee farm that is now the Karen Blixen Museum and the Chyulu Hills standing in for the Ngong Hills.
This route follows Blixen's years in Kenya and the places the film made famous: the railway museum whose locomotive pulls the opening train, the club where Farah is turned away, the farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills, the Norfolk castle that plays Denmark, Voi Airport where Denys Finch Hatton's plane went down, and the obelisk grave on the hillside above Nairobi.
Demon Slayer is set in Taisho-era Japan, and fans trace its real places from the Kamado shrines of Dazaifu and Beppu to Mt. Kumotori and Asakusa.
Tanjiro's story runs from Mt. Kumotori to the Infinity Castle, and the route follows the fan trail in story order: two Kamado shrines, the mountain where he burned charcoal, the boulder he had to cut, the wisteria park fans read as the Final Selection, Asakusa and Yoshiwara, Ginzan Onsen as the Swordsmith Village, and the Aizu ryokan whose lobby looks like the Infinity Castle. Most are working shrines, streets and businesses; visit quietly.
Conan the Barbarian was filmed across Spain: the Cimmerian village at Valsaín, the Wheel of Pain near Solosancho, the witch's rocks at the Ciudad Encantada, and the deserts, dunes and salt marshes of Almería.
The Hyborian Age is invented; every stop here is a real place. The route follows the film from the raid on Conan's village to the Mountain of Power, and ends at Shepperton Studios in England, where an older King Conan speaks the closing lines.
Fallout 4 turns Boston into the post-nuclear Commonwealth, and most of its landmarks are real: Fenway Park becomes Diamond City, the Old North Church hides the Railroad, and the USS Constitution still floats in Charlestown harbor. The fourth main Fallout game, it is set ten years after Fallout 3.
This route follows the Sole Survivor from Vault 111 outside Concord to the Institute beneath MIT, then to the Castle on Castle Island, the Navy Yard and Bunker Hill. Some story sites are invented, so their pins mark the real places that inspired or contain them.
GTA: San Andreas turns California and Nevada into one state: Los Santos is Los Angeles, San Fierro is San Francisco, Las Venturas is Las Vegas. The 2004 game follows CJ from Grove Street to stand-ins for the Golden Gate, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip.
This route visits seven real stand-ins behind the game, from Compton and the Hollywood Sign to Mount Diablo, the Golden Gate Bridge, Area 51, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip. Every pin marks the real place, and each stop names the in-game location it doubles for. Expect city traffic, desert heat and long drives between stops.
Halloween's Haddonfield is South Pasadena and Hollywood, from the Myers house on Mission Street to the Doyle house on Orange Grove Avenue. John Carpenter shot the 1978 film in 20 days that May, using a quiet Los Angeles suburb, a Sierra Madre cemetery and two houses on a Hollywood block with few palm trees to stand in for Illinois.
This route follows Michael Myers from the 1963 murder in his childhood home to the stolen mask at Nichol's Hardware, the school day, the first sighting at the hedge and the babysitting night in Hollywood. The Myers house has moved since filming; the route says where it stands now.
Morioh in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable is based on Sendai, Japan, the hometown of the creator Hirohiko Araki. Its place names come from real streets such as Kōtōdai and Jōzenji, and its coast from the area around Matsushima.
The route walks from Araki's birthplace through the park and tree-lined avenue that lend the town its names, to the Mediatheque that hosted the JoJo exhibitions, the Lawson that became OWSON, and the suburbs and coast that supplied Morioh's look. Morioh itself is fictional, so most stops are real names and real models, not scene locations.
The Fast and the Furious (2001) turned real Los Angeles places into Dom Toretto's world: Dodger Stadium, Bob's Market in Echo Park, the house on East Kensington Road and Neptune's Net in Malibu.
This route follows nine of those places in story order, from the opening test at Dodger Stadium to the final race on Terminal Island, with a detour to Race Wars at San Bernardino. Some are working shops, homes or airport ground; the film's streets are still the draw.
Brigada is a crime series about four Moscow friends, Sasha Bely, Kosmos, Pchyola and Fil, who swear loyalty to each other on Sparrow Hills at dawn in 1989. Its plot visits the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper and the Uzbekistan restaurant on Neglinnaya Street, and the series was written at Mosfilm and partly filmed in Taldom.
The route walks through the places the plot names in Moscow, then the studio where the script was written and the town where a station scene set in Chechnya was shot.
Hocus Pocus is set in Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween, and filmed at Pioneer Village, Salem Common, the Ropes Mansion and Old Town Hall.
The route follows the film from the 1693 prologue at Pioneer Village through the high school on Essex Street, Salem Common, Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, Max's house on Ocean Avenue and the Ropes Mansion, then to the town party at Old Town Hall and the Park Plaza Hotel ballroom in Los Angeles. Most Salem scenes are exteriors; the interiors were studio work in Burbank.
Dirty Dancing is set at a fictional Catskills resort but was filmed at Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia and around Lake Lure, North Carolina. In the summer of 1963, Baby Houseman falls for dance instructor Johnny Castle and takes his partner's place at a nearby resort.
This route follows the film from the Houseman family's arrival to the final lift, through the places that stood in for Kellerman's and the Catskills resort often cited as its model: the lodge and lake at Mountain Lake, the old boys' camp and golf green at Lake Lure, and Grossinger's in New York.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was shot across Los Angeles and beyond in 1990 and 1991: the Sixth Street Bridge, the Santa Monica Place mall, the Bull Creek spillway and the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana all appear in the film.
This route follows nine of those real places in story order, from the biker bar where the T-800 picks up its clothes to the steel mill where it dies. Some have vanished — the Sixth Street Viaduct was demolished and the Corral Bar is now a library — and one is in Fremont, not Los Angeles at all.
Life is Strange is set on the Oregon coast and True Colors in Colorado: Arcadia Bay draws on Astoria and Garibaldi, Haven Springs on Idaho Springs and Georgetown. Max Caulfield comes home to a missing girl and a storm only she can see; Alex Chen arrives to meet the brother she barely knows, then stays to solve his death.
The route follows the games in order, from Cape Meares and the Oregon towns behind Arcadia Bay to Idaho Springs, Georgetown, Nederland and Marble, the Colorado towns behind Haven Springs.
Akito wakes after a traffic crash in a Shibuya emptied by a masked occultist's fog, sharing his body with the spirit KK and able to see the Marebito that now fill the streets. Tango Gameworks built the district as a condensed, walkable stage rather than a straight copy, keeping landmarks, borrowing back streets and folding in a few districts from elsewhere in Tokyo.
The route follows the game from the scramble crossing and the station through Center Gai, Dōgenzaka and the 109 stand-in, then north to a borrowed Yanaka Ginza and across town to the Tokyo Tower finale. Pins mark the real places; the game's map moves some of them closer together.
The Banshees of Inisherin's island is fictional, but the film was shot on two real ones: Inishmore, where Pádraic's cottage and the cliffs stand in for it, and Achill, where the pub, the shop, the lake and Colm's house were found. In April 1923, Colm stops speaking to his oldest friend, Pádraic.
This route follows the film's story from Pádraic's cottage to Colm's beach. Because Inisherin does not exist, every pin marks a real filming location; the sets at Cloughmore and Purteen are gone, and Colm's cottage is a private home to be seen from outside.
Where The Last Kingdom is set: Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, Viking York, the Somerset marshes at Athelney and the battlefield at Edington, the real ground of Uhtred's wars. A Saxon boy raised by Danes, he fights for Alfred and against him, and each stop is set against what history records.
The television series adapts Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories; where a stop follows a particular novel or series, the point says so. The show was filmed mainly in Hungary, so the places below are the real settings of the events, not the filming locations.
