The moai of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) were carved at Rano Raraku quarry and raised on platforms such as Ahu Tongariki and Ahu Akivi, and the island's legends explain them: a founder who landed at Anakena, seven scouts turned to stone, statues that walked, and a birdman race at Orongo.
The route follows those stories from the landing beach to the quarry, the restored platforms and the cliff village above the sea. Oral traditions are told as traditions, not as proven history.
Overwatch (called Overwatch 2 until February 2026) sets its European maps in real places: King's Row is a London neighborhood, Circuit Royal is Monte Carlo, Colosseo is Rome, Rialto is Venice and Esperança is inspired by Porto.
This route follows eleven maps west to east, from Grímsvötn in Iceland to Volskaya Industries near St. Petersburg, with the mode, the date each arrived and the real place behind it. Other routes cover Overwatch maps in the Americas and in Africa and Asia. Pins mark a real model place or landmark, not a copied district.
Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) was born in Shikoku, studied in Xi'an and founded Shingon Buddhism at Jingo-ji, Tō-ji and Mount Kōya, where he is entombed at Okunoin.
The route follows the monk from his birthplace at Zentsū-ji to Qinglong Temple in Tang China, then back to the temples near Kyoto and the mountain retreat he asked for in 816. It ends at his mausoleum, where monks still bring him meals.
Shakushain's War (1669) was the Ainu uprising against the Matsumae clan of Japan, fought between Shinhidaka, Matsumae Castle and Kunnui in Hokkaido.
The route follows the revolt from the feud on the Shibechari River to the mediation at Matsumae, the fighting at Kunnui and the leader's death at Piypok. It ends with the Shakushain statue in Shinhidaka. Several sites are approximate and are marked as such.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was fought at Port Arthur, on the Yalu River, at Mukden and in the Tsushima Strait, and ended at Portsmouth, Maine.
This route follows the war from the first night attack on Port Arthur in February 1904 to the peace treaty signed in September 1905. Battlefields are pinned approximately; only the Mikasa and the Portsmouth shipyard are exact.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought in February and March 1945 on a small volcanic island in Japan's Ogasawara group, from the black-sand landing beaches to the summit of Mount Suribachi. Its famous flag-raising photograph became the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
This route follows the battle from the landing on 19 February, through the Suribachi flag-raising and the fight for the northern gorge, to the memorial in Arlington and the 1985 Reunion of Honor, where veterans of both sides met on the same beach. Iwo Jima itself is not open to ordinary visitors.
The Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 were fought at Tsushima, Iki Island and Hakata Bay in Fukuoka, and ended off Takashima, where a typhoon struck the fleet.
This route follows the two attempts in order: the 1274 landings on Tsushima and Iki, the Battle of Bun'ei at Hakata Bay and Hakozaki Shrine, then the stone wall built afterwards, the fleet anchored off Shikanoshima and the storm of 15 August 1281. Several spots are approximate, and the exact site of the Takashima episode is only the island's general area.
In 1648 Semyon Dezhnyov sailed from the Kolyma River past Cape Dezhnev and through the Bering Strait, eighty years before Vitus Bering entered the strait in 1728, and ended up wrecked near the mouth of the Anadyr.
The route follows the voyage from Srednekolymsk to the cape, the Diomede Islands, the Anadyr mouth and the winter quarters at Anadyrsk. Some details, including the exact route, are debated, so most pins are approximate.
Leif Erikson's voyage runs from Eiríksstaðir in Iceland through Brattahlíð in Greenland to L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland.
The route follows the sagas: a boyhood on Erik the Red's farms, a crew of thirty-five, and the lands Leif named Helluland and Markland. The saga lands are only traditionally identified, so their pins are approximate regions rather than exact spots.
Nelson Mandela's life runs from a Mbashe River village to the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, with stops at Fort Hare, Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, Robben Island and Victor Verster Prison along the way.
The route follows him from his birth in Mvezo on 18 July 1918 through student days, underground work, years in prison and his inauguration as South Africa's first democratically elected president on 10 May 1994. Most stops can be visited; the pins at Mvezo and Qunu mark the villages, not a single building.
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.
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.
Selma Lagerlöf's Nils Holgersson flies over Sweden on a goose's back, from the castles of Skåne at Vittskövle and Glimmingehus to the cliffs of Kullaberg, Karlskrona, Öland and Stockholm's Skansen.
The novel takes a tiny boy across all the historical provinces of Sweden. This route follows six real places from its southern chapters to the capital, with the scene the book sets at each. Ottenby is approximate.
Cast Away strands a FedEx troubleshooter on a Pacific island that is really Monuriki in Fiji, with a failed raft escape shot on Namotu. Its Memphis scenes draw on FedEx's real home base, and its opening and closing crossroads lie near Canadian, Texas.
The route follows Chuck Noland from a Moscow street off Red Square and the FedEx hub in Memphis to the two islands in Fiji, then back to the Texas Panhandle for the last scene. The island is never named in the film, so two stops are filming stand-ins.
From Russia with Love sends James Bond to Istanbul, onto the Orient Express and out to Venice, and it was filmed in the Grand Bazaar, the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia and Sirkeci Terminal. The villains' island base was Pinewood Studios, and the speedboat chase was shot in Scotland.
The route follows the film from SPECTRE's lair through Istanbul's landmarks to the train, the chase in Scotland and the gondola finale. One caveat: the closing shot under the Bridge of Sighs is clearly rear projection.
Nicosia's walled old city is a five-kilometre ring of Venetian fortifications with three surviving gates — Famagusta, Kyrenia and Paphos. Inside are the Selimiye Mosque, the Bedesten, the caravanserai of Büyük Han and Ledra Street, the shopping street that became a symbol of the island's division. The walk crosses the Green Line on foot.
The route begins at Eleftheria Square, enters by Famagusta Gate and loops through the old city: the Selimiye and the Bedesten, Büyük Han, Kyrenia Gate, the Ledra Street crossing, the Ömeriye Mosque and Paphos Gate. The Selimiye, Bedesten, Büyük Han and Kyrenia Gate stand north of the Green Line; the rest are in the south.
Jaws was filmed on Martha's Vineyard, which stood in for Amity Island: Edgartown, State Beach and the Jaws Bridge.
Steven Spielberg began shooting there on 2 May 1974, using the island's whaling town, its barrier beaches and the little Chappaquiddick ferry as the summer resort the shark terrorises. This route follows the film from the opening bonfire at South Beach to the last shot off Cape Poge Light. In between are Brody's beach-closing signs at Water and Main, the Kintner attack at Joseph Sylvia State Beach, the shark's run under the American Legion Memorial Bridge into Sengekontacket Pond, Quint's vanished workshop at Menemsha and the open water between Oak Bluffs and East Chop where the Orca hunts.
Two Naughty Dog adventures, two treasure hunts: Nathan Drake chases Marco Polo's Cintamani Stone from an Istanbul museum through Borneo and Nepal to the legend of Shambhala, then follows Francis Drake's secret to a lost city in the Arabian sands.
The route follows both games in order. The legendary cities are invented or borrowed, and the game rarely names a real site, so every pin marks the country, city or region behind the chapter.
Percy Jackson is a twelve-year-old boy in New York City who has just learned that the Greek gods are real — and that Zeus's master bolt is missing. With Annabeth and Grover, he has ten days to cross the country, find the bolt and reach the Underworld beneath Los Angeles before a war breaks out on Olympus.
Rick Riordan's 2005 novel turns real American landmarks into monster stops: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Montauk beach, the Gateway Arch, a Denver water park, a Las Vegas casino that eats time, the Santa Monica Pier and the Empire State Building. A Disney+ series adapted the story from December 2023 to January 2024.
Sleeping Dogs sends an undercover cop into the Sun On Yee triad across a compact Hong Kong built from four real Island districts. The designers photographed the city for a week and then bent it to fit the story.
This route visits the four districts in turn, starting with Aberdeen, where the story opens. Pins mark whole districts, not mission sites: no source ties a specific mission to a street.
Mafia II is set in Empire Bay, a city that never existed but borrows from six real American ones. This route follows Vito's story from Sicily in 1943 to the 1951 war between mob families and the Triads.
Only Sicily and a New York City stand-in are pinned; the sources tie no mission to a real place, so the remaining story stops stay unpinned.
A Russian student expelled from university in 1864 ends up living among people in north-eastern New Guinea who had never seen a European. Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay was a zoologist and anthropologist, an early follower of Darwin who refuted the view that human races were different species.
The route follows him from Haeckel's Jena and the Canary Islands to Astrolabe Bay, the Sydney research station he founded, and his grave in St Petersburg. Most pins are approximate: the sources name regions, not camps.
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.
Victor Frankenstein grows up on the shore of Lake Geneva, builds his creature in the university town of Ingolstadt, and spends the rest of the book running from it, across a glacier above Chamonix, to a rock in the Orkneys and back to the lake. Mary Shelley's novel is a chain of scenes scattered over several countries rather than one trip.
This route visits six of them in story order, quoting the novel's Project Gutenberg text. The novel names towns and a glacier but rarely a building, so most pins mark a town or area.
