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MoviesApproximate

Zhmurki: Nizhny Novgorod as a 1990s City

Zhmurki (Dead Man's Bluff, 2005) is set in 1990s Nizhny Novgorod, and Aleksei Balabanov filmed it there: in the Kovalikhinsky Baths, at Vodnik Stadium, by the Church of Elijah and in the Sirotkin House. This route follows seven locations of Balabanov's black comedy about bandits of the 1990s, from the bathhouse that played a morgue to the house of the final showdown. Several stops have changed since the shoot, and one is closed to visitors.

7 locations4/7 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Brigada: The 1990s Moscow of Sasha Bely

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.

5 locations2/5 visitable

MoviesFictional

Bayside Shakedown: Odaiba and the Wangan Precinct

Bayside Shakedown is set in Tokyo's fictional Wangan Precinct, and its real home is Odaiba: Fuji Television's headquarters, the island and the Rainbow Bridge that gives the second film its title. The police comedy began on Fuji TV in 1997, the year the network moved to Odaiba, then a half-empty district. This route follows the show from the studio to Tokyo Teleport Station, the shot-in-Shiomi precinct and a Kyoto road junction that doubled for the bridge.

7 locations5/7 visitable

MoviesExact

Hocus Pocus: Salem to Los Angeles

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.

8 locations6/8 visitable

GamesApproximate

Mafia: Definitive Edition: The Real Chicago Behind Lost Heaven

Lost Heaven, Illinois, never existed. The game's studio built it as a 1930s Chicago: an American city split by rivers, its downtown a wall of new skyscrapers, its West Side holding Italian and Chinese neighborhoods, its fortunes made on Prohibition bootlegging. The studio called Chicago of the 1920s and 1930s its real-world inspiration. This route follows six real Chicago places that stand behind Lost Heaven's geography and mood: the river at Wolf Point, the elevated Loop, the Board of Trade, Taylor Street, Chinatown and a jazz club with Prohibition history. The pins mark real Chicago sites, not in-game locations; Lost Heaven is fictional and the game maps no district one-to-one onto the city.

6 locations6/6 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Nansen and the Fram: Drifting Across the Arctic

In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen froze a purpose-built ship into the Arctic ice on purpose. His bet was that the pack would carry it across the top of the world, and the sceptics called it self-destruction. This route follows the voyage from Vardø to the pack ice, the drift, the sledge dash to 86°14′N, a hard winter in a stone hut and a lucky meeting at Cape Flora, ending at the museum where the ship rests. Ocean and ice stops have no map pin.

8 locations2/8 visitable

HistoryApproximate

The Romanovs' Last Journey: Tsarskoye Selo to Yekaterinburg

The Romanovs' last journey runs from the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo to the governor's mansion in Tobolsk and the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, then to Ganina Yama and Porosyonkov Log. Sixteen months after Nicholas II's abdication, none of the family was alive. The route follows that road from the Alexander Palace through the governor's house in Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg and the forest sites nearby, where the story ended and where it was later argued over. It is told plainly, and the final stops are places of mourning for many visitors.

5 locations4/5 visitable

HistorySpeculative

Amelia Earhart: The Last Flight, 1937

Amelia Earhart's last flight, 1937: from Oakland and Pearl Harbor to Miami, Lae in New Guinea and Howland Island, which she never reached, and on to Nikumaroro, where one theory says she came down. A crash in Hawaii and a lost radio signal made it one of history's great mysteries. The route follows both attempts, from Oakland and Pearl Harbor to Miami, Lae and Howland Island, and ends at Nikumaroro, where one theory says she and her navigator came down. That final stop is only a hypothesis.

6 locations1/6 visitable

HistoryApproximate

Suvorov's Swiss Campaign: Over the Alps, 1799

In September 1799 the Russian field marshal Suvorov led his army into Switzerland to join the Allied forces, only to find his allies failing him. He fought through the Alps, crossed high passes and ended in Chur. The route follows the march from Taverne to Chur. Dates are Gregorian (New Style), and pins mark villages or passes rather than battlefields.

8 locations1/8 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong: Chungking Express to Kai Tak

Two love stories shot in guerrilla style across Hong Kong in 1994: a policeman who buys cans of pineapple while he waits for a month to end, and a girl at a fast-food counter who sneaks into a policeman's flat. The route follows the plot from a Tsim Sha Tsui nightclub to a block of guesthouses, then across the harbour to Lan Kwai Fong and the Mid-Levels escalator, and ends at Kai Tak, the old airport in Fallen Angels. Chungking Express stops are filming sites; the Midnight Express pin is approximate.

5 locations3/5 visitable

BooksSpeculative

Water Margin: From Longhu to Liangshan

Water Margin follows 108 spirits freed from a sealed hall on Longhu Mountain as they become the outlaws of Liangshan Marsh, with stops at Mount Wutai and the Xunyang Tower. A real Song Jiang appears in the Song History; the marsh silted up centuries ago. Each stop is a scene from the novel, set beside what is documented: a real Song Jiang appears in the Song History, and the real Liangshan Marsh silted up centuries ago. Places tied to the story only by later tradition are marked.

7 locations7/7 visitable

MoviesFictional

Sailor Moon: Azabu-Jūban and the Hikawa Shrine

Sailor Moon is a fantasy about moon princesses and magical warriors, but its home ground is a real Tokyo neighbourhood. Author Naoko Takeuchi had lived in Azabu-Jūban, and apart from the fantasy elements most places in the story are modelled on real ones nearby. This route visits five of them: the shopping street, a park under a highway, two shrines that stand in for the Hikawa Shrine of the story, and Tokyo Tower. The manga and the older anime sometimes used different real models, and the two shrine pins mark real stand-ins for the story's invented Hikawa Shrine.

5 locations5/5 visitable

MoviesApproximate

The Talented Mr. Ripley: Ischia to Venice

Where The Talented Mr. Ripley was filmed: Ischia Ponte and Procida stand in for Mongibello, Anzio plays San Remo, and Marge voices her suspicions at Caffè Florian in Venice. Tom Ripley is paid $1,000 to bring Dickie Greenleaf home, and a seaside friendship becomes a trail of lies and killings. The route follows the film's order through Ischia and Procida, Anzio, Naples, Rome and Venice. Many places play other places: Ischia and Procida stand in for the fictional village of Mongibello, Anzio plays San Remo, and the "Roman" opera house is in Naples.

8 locations8/8 visitable

BooksApproximate

Three Men in a Boat: Kingston to Oxford

Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 comic novel sends three friends, J., George and Harris, and the dog Montmorency up the Thames in a rowing skiff, from Kingston to Oxford, camping out for a fortnight. What follows is one of the funniest books ever written about getting nowhere fast: a hedge maze with a guide who cannot find the exit, a punt run down at sunset, a dog who treats every cat as a personal enemy, and a provision-buying procession that staggers the whole town. The route follows the boat in the book's own order: Kingston's back streets, Hampton Court's maze, the lock opposite Weybridge where George joins them, the island where King John is said to have signed the Charter, tea below Cookham, a night in Marlow, Henley before the regatta, the old walls of Wallingford, and the difficult last mile into Oxford.

9 locations8/9 visitable

GamesApproximate

Kingdom Come: Deliverance — Medieval Bohemia in Real Life

Bohemia, 1403. King Wenceslaus IV has been kidnapped by his half-brother Sigismund, whose mercenaries burn the silver-mining village of Skalitz. Henry, the blacksmith's son, survives, and the rest of the 2018 role-playing game by Prague's Warhorse Studios follows his hunt for justice and his father's sword across a small stretch of the Sázava valley in Central Bohemia. Almost every place in the game is real and still on the map: Stříbrná Skalice, the ruins of Talmberk, the town of Rataje with its castle Pirkštejn, the monastery at Sázava. Many of the lords Henry serves were real people too. The route follows the main story; the sequel's opening at Trosky closes it.

7 locations5/7 visitable

HistoryApproximate

The First Crusade: Road to Jerusalem

In November 1095 Pope Urban II, answering a Byzantine emperor's plea for help against the Seljuk Turks, called western Christians to an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Tens of thousands answered — knights, foot soldiers and poor pilgrims. Their armies took separate roads to Constantinople, then marched together across Anatolia and Syria. Almost four years after the call, they stormed Jerusalem and massacred much of its population. The route follows the main armies in order, from Clermont to Jerusalem, using the participants' own chronicles as summarised by modern historians. Violence against Jews in the Rhineland and against the people of the cities on the way is part of the story and is named plainly. There are no travel tips for Syria or the Lebanese border area.

8 locations3/8 visitable

MoviesExact

Before Sunrise: One Night in Vienna

On 16 June 1994 an American, Jesse, and a French student, Céline, meet on a train from Budapest. He talks her into getting off with him in Vienna, and with no money for a hotel they walk the city all night, talking about love, death and everything else until his flight leaves in the morning. Richard Linklater's 1995 film was shot entirely in Vienna and began a trilogy that continued in Before Sunset and Before Midnight. The film strings its locations together as if they were a single walk; in reality they are scattered across the city, from the outer districts to the Danube. This route visits them in the order of the night.

9 locations9/9 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

The Odyssey of Christopher McCandless

Into the Wild tells the true story of Christopher McCandless: he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990, paddled the Colorado River into Mexico, worked in Carthage, South Dakota, and in April 1992 walked onto the Stampede Trail outside Healy, Alaska. He died in an abandoned bus that August, aged 24. Jon Krakauer wrote the book in 1996; Sean Penn filmed it in 2007. The route follows his documented trail. The Stampede Trail is dangerous, and this route is not an invitation to retrace the last part of it.

8 locations4/8 visitable

BooksApproximate

On the Road: Kerouac's American Journey

Between 1947 and 1950 Sal Paradise, a young writer from New Jersey, crosses America again and again — hitchhiking, by bus and in borrowed cars — usually in pursuit of his wild, magnetic friend Dean Moriarty. Jack Kerouac typed the story on a continuous scroll of paper in three weeks in April 1951, and it was published in 1957. Sal is Kerouac, Dean is Neal Cassady, and most of the trips really happened. The route picks out the places the novel names, from a rainy false start on the Hudson to Mexico City and back to a New York street corner. The novel gives towns and streets rather than addresses, so most pins mark areas, not doors.

9 locations8/9 visitable