In June 1791 Louis XVI and his family fled the Tuileries Palace in Paris for the fortress of Montmédy, only to be stopped at Varennes-en-Argonne after being recognised at Sainte-Menehould.
This route marks the royal coach's stops from the palace to Varennes, the citadel it never reached, and the way back through Châlons to a silent Paris. Several stops are approximate, because the sources do not name exact buildings.
Richard III's story runs from Middleham Castle in Yorkshire to Bosworth Field, where he died in 1485, and on to Leicester, where his grave was found under a car park in 2012.
The route follows his childhood at Middleham, the battle of Tewkesbury, the princes at the Tower of London, his last charge at Bosworth, and the Greyfriars dig and cathedral tomb in Leicester. The exact Bosworth battlefield is still debated.
The Decembrist revolt began on Senate Square in Saint Petersburg on 26 December 1825, when officers led about 3,000 men against the new tsar, and ended for its leaders in Siberian exile at Irkutsk, Chita and Petrovsky Zavod.
The route follows the day of the uprising in the capital, then the long road east, where the exiles' wives followed them and won small concessions from Nicholas I. Dates are given in the modern calendar; the Siberian stops are towns, not exact prison sites.
In 1612 a Nizhny Novgorod merchant, Kuzma Minin, and Dmitry Pozharsky raised the volunteer army that cleared Polish forces from the Moscow Kremlin. The route follows it from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin through Yaroslavl and the Trinity Lavra to Red Square.
The five stops trace the militia's march and the monuments to its leaders. The Yaroslavl pin marks the city, as the sources name no building.
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.
The Via Appia, the Appian Way, ran from Rome through the Pontine Marshes, Terracina, Capua and Beneventum to the port of Brindisi, and parts of it can still be walked. It was begun in 312 BC.
The seven stops follow the road in order, from the Porta Appia gate and the Tomb of Caecilia Metella to the Spartacus story at Capua, the defeat of Pyrrhus at Beneventum and the column by the harbour at Brindisi. Several locations are approximate, as the road crossed whole regions.
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.
Root Letter is set in Matsue, Shimane, and its backdrops copy real places: the Shimane Art Museum, the Kyomise shopping street, Lake Shinji, Yaegaki Shrine and Matsue Castle.
A man travels to Matsue to find Fumino Aya, a pen pal who vanished 15 years earlier, and questions her old classmates one by one. The route follows five real places that the game turns into scenes, from the lakeside city to a shrine tied to the Yamata-no-Orochi legend. The game's order of visits is not documented, so the stops are a sequence, not a timetable.
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.
Tom Clancy's The Division is set in a quarantined New York City after a Black Friday virus outbreak, and it plays out among real Manhattan landmarks: the James A. Farley Building, Madison Square Garden and the United Nations Headquarters.
This route follows the Agent from the Brooklyn tutorial and Hudson Pier into Midtown, to the base and a rooftop firefight, and on to the final assault on the UN. The game's map is its own, so the pins mark the real places behind it.
Agatha Christie's Devon runs from Burgh Island, the model for Soldier Island in And Then There Were None, to Churston, Dittisham and her own Greenway estate on the River Dart.
The route follows five stops through The A.B.C. Murders, And Then There Were None, Five Little Pigs, Towards Zero and Dead Man's Folly. Two stops share the Greenway pin, and Nasse House is fictional.
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.
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 Alatriste is set in Madrid, from the Plaza Mayor and the House of the Seven Chimneys to the Prado, where Velázquez's The Surrender of Breda hangs, and from the siege of Breda to Seville. Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novels follow a Spanish sword for hire and his young squire Íñigo Balboa.
The route walks the Madrid of the first two books, follows the army to Breda in the third, and ends in Seville with The King's Gold. Breda and Seville are approximate pins; the Madrid stops can be visited.
Lampedusa's The Leopard is set in Palermo and the fictional Donnafugata, which is really Santa Margherita di Belice; Visconti's 1963 film borrowed Ciminna and Palazzo Gangi for the same scenes.
The route follows the Prince of Salina through the Sicily of 1860: his observatory villa near Palermo, the ruined town palace of the author's family, the country estate at Donnafugata and the great ball. The novel's places are partly invented, so each stop says how closely the pin matches the page.
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.
George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is set in Barcelona and on the Aragon front in 1937, from Alcubierre and the lines around Huesca to the May Days on La Rambla and Plaça de Catalunya. It is Orwell's account of fighting with the POUM militia, written from his own experience.
The route follows the book in order: the village where rifles are handed out, the siege lines at Huesca, the telephone exchange where the street fighting began, the rooftop on La Rambla and a quiet day in Barbastro.
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.
Tomihiko Morimi's The Tatami Galaxy and The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl are set among Kyoto University students, on Kiyamachi Street, the Kamo Delta, Pontochō and the grounds of Shimogamo Shrine.
The Tatami Galaxy replays one student's college years in parallel timelines that always end on a bridge over the river. The Night Is Short follows a black-haired heroine through a night of drinking in Pontochō and a used book fair. The stops are real Kyoto places; the boarding house exists only in the story.
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.
Zombie Land Saga is set across Saga Prefecture, from a mansion modelled on a real Karatsu building and Saga Castle to the hot springs of Ureshino and the Alpino hall in Karatsu.
In the anime, seven legendary girls from different eras are revived as zombies to form an idol group and revive Saga. This route follows their gigs and haunts, with the real venues behind them. Some places are fictional or only approximate, as noted.
