The legend of Romulus and Remus begins at Alba Longa in the Alban Hills and ends on Rome's Palatine and Aventine hills, with a she-wolf's cave and a fig tree along the Tiber in between. The bronze Capitoline Wolf still carries the story to visitors on the Capitoline Hill.
The route follows the myth from the twins' birth to the quarrel that leaves Romulus as founder. Most sites are traditional rather than proven, and the stops say so.
Long Way Down follows Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's 2007 motorbike ride from John o' Groats in Scotland through Silverstone, Tunisia and the pyramids of Giza to Cape Agulhas and Cape Town.
The route picks five stops along the 12 May to 4 August 2007 journey, from the Scottish start to the southernmost tip of Africa. Pins at Tunisia and Giza are approximate.
The Trans-Siberian Railway runs 9,289 kilometres from Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station across Krasnoyarsk, Lake Baikal and Khabarovsk to Vladivostok, crossing a record eight time zones.
The line was begun in 1891 and finished only when the Amur bridge opened in 1916. This route follows it west to east through five landmarks: the two matching terminal stations, the great Yenisei bridge, the loop line around Baikal and the long Amur crossing.
The Easter Rising of April 1916 was fought across central Dublin, from the General Post Office on O'Connell Street to the Royal College of Surgeons on St Stephen's Green and the canal at Mount Street Bridge.
This route follows the week from the muster at Liberty Hall and the seizure of City Hall to the surrender from Moore Street and the executions at Kilmainham Gaol. Several stops can be visited today.
The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 began at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the home of Lord Carnarvon, who paid for Howard Carter's search in the Valley of the Kings. This route follows the money and the dig, from Hampshire to Luxor and Cairo.
It runs from the 1907 digs at Deir el-Bahari to the first step of KV62, Carnarvon's death in Cairo, his burial on Beacon Hill and the museum where the treasures ended up. One caveat: the exact site of the Cairo hotel is not pinned.
Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is set in Oxford, at a fictional country house played on screen by Castle Howard, in Venice and at London's Savoy Chapel. It follows Charles Ryder, who is drawn into the family of his friend Sebastian.
This route visits Hertford and Christ Church in Oxford, the Yorkshire house that played Brideshead, the Venice palace used by the 1981 serial, and the Savoy Chapel. Brideshead itself is fictional, so some pins mark filming stand-ins.
Lucky Star is set in Saitama, north of Tokyo, and its anime borrows real places: Washinomiya Shrine in Kuki, Kasukabe Station, the Gongendo embankment in Satte and Akihabara.
The route follows the four high-school girls from their neighbourhoods to the shrine where fans began their pilgrimages in 2007, then on to Akihabara and Tokyo Big Sight. The anime changes some names, so several pins mark a model, not an exact scene.
The X-Files is set in Oregon, Alaska, Washington State and Pennsylvania, but it was filmed around Vancouver: in Queen Elizabeth Park, at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, at Delta Air Park and in Chinatown. The show remained in Vancouver for its first five seasons, and its 2008 film returned to British Columbia.
The route follows seven episodes and a film, from the pilot in 1993 to I Want to Believe in 2008, and pairs each scene with the British Columbia place that played it. Some scenes were shot in a specific building or clearing the sources do not name, so those pins are approximate.
The Hunger Games was filmed almost entirely in North Carolina: District 12 is the abandoned Henry River Mill Village, the arena is DuPont State Forest with Triple Falls, and the Capitol parade rolls through Charlotte. The sequels moved to Atlanta, where Swan House, the Goat Farm Arts Center and the Marriott Marquis stand in for Snow's mansion, the District 12 Justice Building and the Capitol tribute center.
This route follows the story from the reaping to the Hanging Tree, with eight real places and what each one plays in the films. Some sites, such as Henry River Mill Village, are private, so check the guidance before you go.
Quantum of Solace films its revenge chase in real places: the lakeside road at Malcesine, the rooftops and Palio crowd of Siena, the floating opera stage at Bregenz, the docks of Colón, a tower at Talamone and the Atacama Desert. Bond follows Mr White from Lake Garda to Siena, then Greene through Haiti, Austria and Bolivia, with Panama standing in for both Haiti and Bolivia and Chile for the Bolivian desert.
The route follows the film's order, from the opening car chase on Lake Garda to the snowy epilogue in Kazan. Some stops are exact filming sites, some are stand-ins: Panama's Colón and Panama City play Haiti and Bolivia, the Residencia at Paranal plays Greene's desert hotel, and Kazan is really Aldershot. The Water Gardens in London and the barracks are private or military, so they are map stops rather than visits.
Friday the 13th (1980) was filmed at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick, New Jersey, with Blairstown's Main Street, the Moravian Cemetery in Hope and the Blairstown Diner standing in for the town and countryside around Camp Crystal Lake.
The film was shot in and around Hardwick, Blairstown and Hope in autumn 1979, mostly at a working Boy Scout camp on Sand Pond. This route follows Annie's hitchhike into town, the counselors' night at camp, Steve Christy's evening at the diner and Alice's final struggle on the lakeshore.
Outer Banks is set on the fictional Kildare Island in North Carolina, but the first season was filmed around Charleston, South Carolina: Shem Creek, Lowndes Grove, Hunting Island and Secessionville stand in for the Cut, Figure Eight and the Pogues' harbor.
This route follows Season 1 from John B's Chateau and the Boneyard brawl to Tannyhill, the Redfield Lighthouse, Kiara's restaurant and the church bell tower where the story turns. Most stops are public waterfront, park or restaurant; the two houses are not open as regular attractions.
The Walking Dead was filmed across Georgia, with downtown Atlanta, Bellwood Quarry, the Cobb Energy Centre and Senoia standing in for its apocalyptic sets.
This route follows the show from Rick's first ride into Atlanta, through the survivors' camp at the quarry and the CDC, then south to the town that became Woodbury and to Rick's home town, and on to Alexandria and the Kingdom. Most of the stops are on public streets or in public parks; the two studio-lot stops sit on private land.
Stand by Me moves King's Castle Rock from Maine to Oregon: Rob Reiner shot the 1986 film in Brownsville, along the Row River railway and at a California trestle. Four boys walk out of town to find a missing boy's body, and the trip changes them.
This route follows the film in story order, from Brownsville's Main Street and the treehouse to the saloon and diner where the trip is set in motion, the Row River Trail bridge near Cottage Grove, a Junction City general store, the 80-foot trestle above Lake Britton and the Calapooia River bridge where the boys part. Most stops are in Oregon; the trestle is in California.
Goblin was filmed in Seoul, on the Jumunjin breakwater on Korea's east coast and in Quebec City, where the red door in Petit-Champlain, the Château Frontenac and the Tourny fountain appear. A Goryeo general killed by his king returns as an immortal goblin and spends 939 years looking for the bride who can pull the sword from his chest.
The route follows the story from the palace set where his Goryeo past was filmed to his house in Seoul, the Gangneung breakwater where they first meet, and the old streets of Quebec City beyond a red door. It ends at the park that stands in for the Yoo family cemetery.
Every Far Cry game drops you into a country that does not exist, and almost every one was built from a real place. The developers camped on the savanna, sent a team to Nepal, spent two weeks in Montana and a month in Cuba.
This route follows the series in release order, one stop per game. Pins mark whole countries or regions, not scenes: they show where each fictional setting came from, and one entry has no sourced real model.
Hemingway wrote his last great novella in Cuba, about a fisherman and one enormous marlin. The places around it are real: the hotel room where he first lived, the bar he loved, the house where he wrote, and the fishing village next door.
This route follows the writer's Cuba from Old Havana to the harbour of Cojímar, where the Pilar was moored. The novella itself is under copyright, so the story is kept to its outline.
In 1974 Bruce Chatwin set out for Patagonia to find his own "piece of brontosaurus": a scrap of skin sent to his grandmother by her cousin, Charley Milward the sailor. Six months of travel became In Patagonia, the book that made his name.
This route follows the quest from a natural history museum in La Plata through the Welsh coast, Butch Cassidy's cabin and Milward's house in Punta Arenas, to the cave where the skin was found. Chatwin's tales were not always literal, so most pins mark areas, not scenes.
Detective Conan is the story of a teenage detective shrunk to a child's size, and its author comes from a small coastal town in Tottori, Japan. Gosho Aoyama was born in Daiei, now part of Hokuei, and the town has turned itself into Conan Town.
The route visits the birthplace, the Conan-themed station, the bridge, the manga museum and the airport that carries Conan's name. The sources do not tie any story scene to these places, so the stops mark the town's own tributes.
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.
Avatar's floating Hallelujah Mountains draw on Wulingyuan and Tianzi Mountain in Hunan, and on Huangshan, though the film was made largely on a Los Angeles stage in Playa Vista. Cameron named Huangshan, Hunan netizens insisted on Zhangjiajie, and the only walkable Pandora is at Florida's Animal Kingdom.
Expect inspiration rather than filming locations: the film was made largely on stages, so the Chinese pins are stand-ins and credited influences.
In 1832 the printmaker Hiroshige travelled the Tōkaidō, the road from Edo to Kyoto, and made it into The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. This route follows seven of his prints, from the bridge where the road began to the bridge where it ended.
Each stop pairs a print with what is there today: a rebuilt checkpoint, a long river bridge, a shrine, a preserved post town. Scholars debate whether Hiroshige saw every station himself, so the pins mark the places, not his exact viewpoints.
Neku Sakuraba wakes in the Shibuya crowd with no memory and is pulled into the Reapers' Game, a week-long contest of missions that decides whether the dead live on or vanish. Square Enix's 2007 Nintendo DS cult classic turned the district into its whole stage, keeping the landmarks and changing the shop names.
The route follows Neku from the scramble crossing to Hachikō, the ramen shop on Dōgenzaka, the Cat Street café, the hidden Shibuya River and the walk back through Udagawa. In-game places are mostly stand-ins, so pins are approximate except two icons.
On New Year's Eve a Moscow surgeon goes to the bathhouse with his friends, wakes up in Leningrad and walks into a flat that looks exactly like his own. The Soviet classic that Russia still watches every 31 December starts as a joke about identical buildings and ends as a love story.
The route follows Zhenya's night from his new flat and the banya to the Leningrad airport, the identical building, and the station, then back to Moscow. The caveat: both the "Leningrad" and the "Moscow" houses were shot in the same Moscow district, and the story's street had been renamed years before.
