Catalog
Heart of Darkness is set in the Congo Free State, a Belgian company's territory, and this route follows Marlow from Brussels to Boma, Matadi, the Livingstone Falls rapids and Kinshasa, then on to Kurtz's station upriver. Conrad's novella names almost none of its places, so most stops are marked as likely identifications, drawn from Conrad's own job on the Congo River.
In AD 79 a mountain above the Bay of Naples blew apart. Pliny the Younger watched from Misenum across the water, lost his uncle, the admiral Pliny the Elder, to the eruption, and years later described it for the historian Tacitus in two letters: the only eyewitness account that survives. The route follows the eruption in the order of its events, from the mountain's first column to Pompeii, Herculaneum, the beach at Stabiae and back to Misenum. Pliny's letters never mention Pompeii or Herculaneum, so those stops come from archaeology. The traditional date is 24 August, but newer evidence points to the autumn.