Hoenn is a world of volcanoes, islands and sea routes, and the games' own region is based on Kyushu, the south-western main island of Japan. Fans and reference writers have matched its towns and landmarks to real places across the island and the seas around it.
This route follows the story from Littleroot Town to the Sealed Chamber and sets each stop beside the place it is said to resemble. The region is inspired by Kyushu, not copied from it, so every pin is an outside reading of the map, not an official location.
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, goes looking for the secret of immortality. This route follows the epic from its city to the Cedar Forest and the flood hero's home, then to the Nineveh library where the tablets were found.
The poem's places are legend and the tablets' places are archaeology; each stop says which, and which pins are only candidates. The Iraqi sites are not visitor destinations.
The boy born on the Onon River became the ruler of the largest land empire in history. This route follows him from the steppe camps of Khentii, through the war that began at a border town in Kazakhstan, to the siege of Samarkand and a death in the middle of a campaign.
The sources disagree on his birth year, his birthplace and his grave. Where the Secret History of the Mongols gives a legend and other sources give the record, the stops say which is which.
Homer's Trojan War on the map: Mycenae, Aulis, where the fleet waited, the hill of Hisarlik, now identified with Troy, and the Scamander plain, then Pylos and Ithaca from the Odyssey. Each stop is told from Homer, with archaeology kept apart.
The route follows the epic from the fleet at Aulis to the plain of the Scamander, then the Odyssey's road home via Pylos and Ithaca. Many identifications here are traditional or disputed, and the pins show it.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453, from Rumeli Hisarı on the Bosphorus and the chain across the Golden Horn to Galata hill and Hagia Sophia. Mehmed II's huge cannons and ships hauled over land took the city on 29 May.
This route follows the siege in order: the fortress on the Bosphorus, the chain across the Golden Horn and the ships that bypassed it, the land-wall gates, and Hagia Sophia. Exact positions of some events are not recorded, so several pins are approximate.
The German Fairy Tale Route runs from Hanau, where the Brothers Grimm were born, to Sababurg, nicknamed Sleeping Beauty Castle, the Pied Piper's Hamelin and the Musicians' Statue in Bremen. The brothers grew up poor, studied law and became librarians.
The route follows the Fairy Tale Route from Hanau, where they were born, through the places they lived and worked, to Sleeping Beauty's castle and the Pied Piper's Hamelin, ending in Bremen with the animals' statue. The tale places are traditional associations, not the Grimms' own claims.
Two Naughty Dog adventures, two treasure hunts: the Drake brothers chase a pirate hoard from a hidden cathedral in the Scottish Highlands to the fabled pirate utopia of Libertalia, and Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross follow a trail of Hindu temples through India's Western Ghats to the Tusk of Ganesh.
The route follows both games in order. Madagascar and Karnataka have real pirate coves and real Hoysala temples behind the fiction, but the games' exact settings are invented, so every pin marks the nearest real place.
Two Dickens novels, one city of thieves' dens, prisons and cramped lodgings. Oliver Twist is dragged into Fagin's gang in the lanes of Holborn, while Pip of Great Expectations arrives from the Kent marshes expecting a soft white city and finds filth.
The route follows Oliver and Nancy from Saffron Hill to London Bridge, Jacob's Island and Newgate, then Pip from Cooling churchyard through Rochester to Little Britain and Barnard's Inn. Several places are traditional models rather than named settings, and each pin says so.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is set in 9th-century Baghdad, with the Round City and the House of Wisdom, and stops at Anbar, Alamut and al-Ula. Street thief Basim Ibn Ishaq becomes a Hidden One hunting the Order of the Ancients amid the Anarchy at Samarra.
The route follows him from the ruined town of Anbar to the mountain fortress of Alamut, through the districts of Baghdad and on to the oasis of al-Ula. Little of the Round City survives and the House of Wisdom is gone, so those pins are approximate; the Iraqi stops are for reading, not visiting.
White Sun of the Desert was filmed on Dagestan's Sarykum dune, the Caspian shore near Makhachkala, Turkmenistan's Karakum sands near Mary and at ancient Merv. Red Army soldier Sukhov only wants to go home to his wife, but the desert keeps handing him other people's problems.
The route follows the shoot in two expeditions: the Caspian shore and the Sarykum dune in Dagestan, then the Karakum sands and the ruins of Merv in Turkmenistan. Several stops are approximate, because the film's village was a temporary set.
Bridgerton is set in London, but most of its streets are in Bath, its parks are in Wiltshire and its family home is in Greenwich.
This route follows the filming locations from the Royal Crescent and Lady Danbury's house in Bath, through London and Kent, to the country houses that played Clyvedon and Aubrey Hall in the first two seasons.
Nikolay Przhevalsky made one expedition to the Ussuri region and four to Central Asia, crossing the Gobi, reaching the wandering lake of Lop Nur and getting within 260 km of Lhasa. He died at Karakol on Lake Issyk-Kul, on the eve of a fifth journey.
This route follows six stops from those journeys and his years between them. They were separate expeditions rather than one trip, so the markers are not joined. Dates are years only.
Vitus Bering's Kamchatka expeditions went from Saint Petersburg through Tobolsk and Okhotsk to the Bering Strait and Bering Island. In 1725 the Russian naval captain set out across a continent to find out whether Asia and America were joined.
The route follows seven places from the Tsar's order in Saint Petersburg to Bering's death on an uninhabited island in 1741. The stops are not one continuous line, so they are shown as separate markers. Dates are Old Style (Julian), as Russian records of the time kept them; the modern calendar runs 11 days ahead.
In July 1497 four ships left Lisbon to find a sea route to India. Vasco da Gama's fleet crossed the open South Atlantic, rounded the Cape, worked its way up the African coast, and reached Calicut on 20 May 1498. The voyage ended with two ships and over half the men lost.
The route follows the voyage from the Restelo shore in Lisbon to Calicut, then home via Anjediva and the Azores. Landing sites are mostly debated or only broadly known, so most pins are approximate. Dates are as the sources give them, in the Julian calendar then in use.
Alexander von Humboldt in the Americas, 1799–1804: Cumaná in Venezuela, the electric eels of Calabozo, Chimborazo in Ecuador, Callao in Peru, the silver mine at Guanajuato and Jefferson's White House. He and Aimé Bonpland spent five years measuring, collecting and climbing.
This route follows eight stops from the landing at Cumaná to Washington in 1804. Several pins are approximate because the sources name a region or river rather than one spot.
In the autumn of 1600 two armies met at Sekigahara to decide who would hold power after Toyotomi Hideyoshi. One day in the fog gave Tokugawa Ieyasu a decisive victory and put him on the road to the shogunate.
The route follows the campaign from the siege of Fushimi to the castles of Mino, the field of Sekigahara, the fall of Mitsunari's Sawayama and his burial in Kyoto, and ends at Edo Castle in 1603. Dates inside Japan's old calendar are labelled as such.
A seventeen-year-old heir is sold to a brig bound for the colonies, wrecked off Mull, and thrown into the heather beside a fugitive named Alan. Stevenson's chase carries them from the Firth of Forth through Appin and the Highlands to the bridge at Stirling.
The route follows David's journey in chapter order, from the Queensferry inn where he is handed over to the old bridge where the pair cross the Forth. Several scenes rest on real events, such as the Appin murder and Cluny MacPherson's hiding place.
The Butterfly Lovers runs from Zhu Yingtai's home in Shangyu and the school in Hangzhou to Liang Shanbo's temple and tomb in Ningbo. The girl who studied disguised as a boy is betrothed to another man; when Liang dies, the earth opens at his grave and the two fly away as butterflies.
The route follows the tale from the heroine's home in Shangyu, to the school in Hangzhou, to the Ningbo temple and tomb, then to a rival claim in Yixing and a statue in Verona. Every Chinese site is local tradition rather than proven history.
Legend of the White Snake begins on Mount Emei and moves to Hangzhou's West Lake, Jinshan Temple in Zhenjiang and Leifeng Pagoda. Two snake spirits take human form and an abbot tries to separate them.
The route follows the popular opera version from the legend's mountain origin, through Hangzhou's West Lake and the flooded temple at Jinshan, to Broken Bridge and the pagoda where the White Snake ends up imprisoned. The tale exists in many versions; this route follows the standard opera telling.
In 1751 the Qianlong Emperor left Beijing for the first of six tours south to Jiangnan, the last in 1784. Much of the way ran along the Grand Canal, and the tours took in the dikes of the Huai, the cities of Jiangnan and the holy sites of Shandong.
This route follows the first two tours. In 1751: the Hongze Lake embankment, West Lake and Mount Tai. In 1757: Yangzhou, Suzhou and Qufu. Dates follow the Chinese lunar calendar used in the court records.
Lin Zexu's crackdown on the opium trade in Canton in 1839 set off a war that ended three years later with a treaty signed on a British warship in the Yangtze. The route follows it from the Pearl River to Nanjing.
Seven stops cover the confiscation, the destruction of the opium at Humen, the clashes at Chuenpi and Dinghai, the raising of the flag at Hong Kong, the fall of Zhenjiang and the treaty talks at Jinghai Temple. Several places have changed beyond recognition, which the notes mark.
A poet who nearly lost his head for his verses, Su Shi (Su Dongpo) was banished to Huangzhou, Huizhou and Hainan, and wrote some of his best work in exile.
The route follows his life in order, from his family home in Sichuan through the 1079 trial, three places of banishment, and his death at Changzhou in 1101. Several stops are rebuilt memorials or city-level markers, and each says so.
Between 1405 and 1433 the Ming court sent a fleet from Nanjing across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, seven times, under the admiral Zheng He. It came home with ambassadors and exotic animals.
This route follows the sequence from the shipyard in Nanjing through Java, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut and Hormuz to Malindi in East Africa, and ends at his empty tomb. Most ports are approximate pins, and later temple traditions are marked as such.
Qin Shi Huang's China: his capital Xianyang, Mount Tai, where he proclaimed the empire's unity, the Lingqu Canal near Guilin, and his tomb at Mount Li with the Terracotta Army. He unified the warring states in 221 BC; some of what is told about him is legend.
This route visits seven places tied to him, from Xianyang to the Terracotta Army. Stops marked as legend or speculative (the elixir quest on Zhifu Island, the lost course of the Qin wall) are kept apart from sites that archaeology has confirmed.
