Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) was shot at Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang, near old Dunhuang in the desert, at Arrow Bamboo Lake and Nuorilang Falls in Jiuzhaigou, and in an autumn oak grove in Inner Mongolia.
The route follows the film from the Qin king's palace to the calligraphy school, the golden-leaf duel, the lake fight and the waterfall. Two stops are unpinned: the sources name the desert location and the oak grove only by area.
In 1805 the frigate HMS Surprise is hammered by a French privateer off Brazil, and her captain will not go home. The chase runs south round Cape Horn to the Galápagos, with a ship's surgeon who only wants to look at birds.
The route follows the film's voyage, then the places where it was actually made: a giant tank in Mexico and the replica ship in San Diego. It covers the 2003 film, not Patrick O'Brian's novels, and the sea stops are left unpinned.
Grigory Pechorin, bored and brilliant, drifts through the Caucasus leaving damage behind him: a smuggler's hut at Taman, the spa season at Pyatigorsk and Kislovodsk, and a duel on a cliff ledge. Lermontov wrote five linked tales and was himself killed in a duel at Pyatigorsk in 1841.
The route follows the book's order, from a snowy pass and a seaport to the spring, the harp pavilion and the rock gate where Pechorin plays his games, ending on Mashuk where the author met his own fate. Some pins mark real places that only stand in for the novel's.
Japan's legendary prince Yamato Takeru rides east from Ise Grand Shrine, escapes a burning plain at Yaizu, crosses Ashigara Pass and meets his end on Mount Ibuki. His sword ends up at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya.
The route follows the legend, told in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles, through five places. Several are traditional identifications, so the pins mark shrines and mountains tied to the tale, not proven battlefields.
Momotarō, Japan's peach-born ogre-slayer, is tied to Okayama through the legend of the ogre Ura, Mount Kijo's fortress, Kibitsu Shrine and Megijima, the island of caves linked to Onigashima.
The route follows the Ura legend from the hilltop fortress to the shrines of Prince Kibitsuhiko, then the island of ogres and the statue at Okayama Station. The Okayama link to the tale is modern, and some stops are traditional identifications.
The Olympian gods' birthplaces are scattered across Greece: Zeus in a cave on Crete or on Mount Lykaion, Apollo and Artemis on Delos, Apollo's oracle at Delphi, and the gods' home on Mount Olympus.
The route follows the myths from Zeus's cradle to the mountain where the gods live. Ancient authors disagreed about where Zeus was born, so those first two stops are traditional claims, not proven sites.
Egil's saga is set in Iceland, Norway and England, and begins at Borg, the farm where Skallagrim settled near today's Borgarnes. Its hero Egill is a poet and warrior whose road runs through the ale feast on Atløy, the battle of Vínheiðr, the Gulating assembly and York.
The route follows the saga from Skallagrim's settlement to Egill's old age, ending with the legend of his hidden silver near Mosfellsbær. Several places are only approximate, because the saga's sites are not firmly identified.
Roald Amundsen's Gjøa expedition of 1903–06 was the first to sail through the Northwest Passage, from Beechey Island and Gjoa Haven in Arctic Canada to Nome in Alaska. Today the little herring boat sits in the Fram Museum in Oslo.
The route follows the voyage stop by stop: the Franklin memorial at Beechey Island, two winters at King William Island, a long ski trip to the telegraph at Eagle, the arrival in Nome, Gjøa's decades in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and her return to Norway.
York has been defended by walls since Roman times, and this walk strings together six places around them: the Multangular Tower, York Minster, Clifford's Tower, Micklegate Bar, the Shambles and Walmgate Bar.
Each stop is a moment in the city's story, from a Roman fort built around 71 AD to a siege in 1644.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 played out across a few kilometres of Petrograd, now Saint Petersburg: the Tauride Palace, Finland Station, the Smolny Institute, the cruiser Aurora and the Winter Palace. All five can still be seen today.
The route follows the year from the February Revolution to the October seizure of power, and separates what the sources record from the legend of the "storming" of the Winter Palace. Dates are Old Style, as used at the time.
Veniamin Kaverin's The Two Captains is set in Pskov (the book's "Ensk"), Moscow, Leningrad and the Arctic, following Sanya, a mute boy who grows into an Arctic pilot and sets out to prove what happened to a lost polar expedition.
The route follows the book from a flooded yard in Pskov to the orphanages of Moscow, the Leningrad blockade, the archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya and Polyarny's Square of Two Captains. Moscow, Leningrad and Severnaya Zemlya are city- or region-level pins, since the book names no exact addresses there.
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.
Natsume Sōseki's Botchan is set in Matsuyama on Shikoku: its hero lands at the harbour, rides a tiny train into town and bathes daily at Dōgo Onsen.
The route follows the young Tokyo teacher from the harbour and the toy train to the school, the bathhouse and the castle during his short, eventful stay in Matsuyama.
Goethe's Faust sends its hero from the student tavern of Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig to the witches' mountain of the Brocken in the Harz, then on to ancient Greece around Farsala, Sparta and Arcadia.
The route follows Mephistopheles' bargain across Faust I and II, from the drunken revelers of Leipzig to the Walpurgis Night on the Brocken and the classical world of Helen of Troy. Leipzig and the Brocken are real places in the play; the Greek stops are stage settings with approximate pins.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is set in Scotland, from a heath near Forres and Glamis Castle to Dunsinane Hill. Its thane titles, coronation and a marching wood all belong to real names on the map. The real Macbeth ruled from 1040 to 1057, and the play takes liberties with him.
The route follows the story from the witches' prophecy to the final duel, through Glamis, Cawdor, Scone, the Birnam Oak and Dunsinane. Several places carry the play's names without staging its scenes, and each stop says so.
Tomihiko Morimi's The Tatami Galaxy and The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl are set among Kyoto University students, on Kiyamachi Street, the Kamo Delta, Pontochō and the grounds of Shimogamo Shrine.
The Tatami Galaxy replays one student's college years in parallel timelines that always end on a bridge over the river. The Night Is Short follows a black-haired heroine through a night of drinking in Pontochō and a used book fair. The stops are real Kyoto places; the boarding house exists only in the story.
The Pokrovsky Gate (1982) is set in 1950s Moscow near the Boulevard Ring, and its real locations include a house on Nashchokinsky Lane, Patriarch Ponds, the Hermitage Garden and a Stalinist high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment.
Mikhail Kozakov's film, made for television by Mosfilm, follows a student, Kostik, and his neighbours in a communal flat. The six stops run from the house to the rink, the bandshell and the hospital. The flat's interior was built in a Mosfilm pavilion, so only the exteriors are real.
Kin-dza-dza! (1986) begins on New Arbat in Moscow and throws two Soviet men into a sandy desert that is really the Karakum near Balkanabat, Turkmenistan. Georgiy Daneliya's cult comedy then plays out on the planet Pluke, which was built from desert, a metro station and studio sets.
The route follows the plot through five real places: the Moscow avenue where the teleporter appears, the Karakum sands, Polyanka metro station, the Army Theatre and Mosfilm. The Pluke locations are approximate or studio stand-ins.
Trainspotting is set in Leith, Edinburgh, but was filmed almost entirely in Glasgow: only the opening chase down Princes Street and Calton Road was shot in the capital. Rouken Glen Park, Jordanhill School and a pub on Queen Margaret Drive fill in for Edinburgh, and Corrour station supplies the film's "great outdoors" scene.
The route follows Renton and his friends from Leith through the chase, the park, the bar and the school to a remote Highland platform. Where a location guide's pub or a bridge name is uncertain, the stop says so.
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.
When Harry Met Sally... begins with a drive out of the University of Chicago and settles into Manhattan, from the Washington Square Arch and Central Park to Katz's Delicatessen, where Sally makes her famous point.
The route follows the pair from graduation in 1977 to a New Year's Eve declaration at the Puck Building, with seven stops: Cobb Gate, the Washington Square Arch, the Loeb Boathouse, the Temple of Dendur, Katz's, Cafe Luxembourg and the Puck Building. Stops follow the film's scene order, not a single journey.
Bond's Japanese mission was shot largely on location: at the Kuramae Kokugikan sumo hall and Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, at Kobe Docks, at Himeji Castle and on the volcano of Shinmoedake in Kagoshima. Filming ran from July 1966 to March 1967, and most of the locations are identifiable.
The route follows Bond from a sumo tournament in Tokyo to the Ama fishing village and the volcano base of Blofeld. Many of these sites can still be seen, though the Kuramae Kokugikan has since been demolished and the SPECTRE base interior was a Pinewood set.
Conan the Barbarian was filmed across Spain: the Cimmerian village at Valsaín, the Wheel of Pain near Solosancho, the witch's rocks at the Ciudad Encantada, and the deserts, dunes and salt marshes of Almería.
The Hyborian Age is invented; every stop here is a real place. The route follows the film from the raid on Conan's village to the Mountain of Power, and ends at Shepperton Studios in England, where an older King Conan speaks the closing lines.
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.
