Hitchcock's North by Northwest starts at the Plaza Hotel and the United Nations in New York, rolls through Grand Central and Chicago's LaSalle Street Station, and ends on Mount Rushmore. Its crop-duster scene, set in Indiana, was filmed near Wasco, California.
An advertising man is mistaken for a spy who does not exist and has to run across the country. The route follows him stop by stop, from the Oak Room to the Chicago hotel where Hitchcock stayed, and says which scenes were real locations and which were sets or stand-ins.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert starts at Sydney's Imperial Hotel in Erskineville, crosses the outback through Broken Hill's Palace Hotel and Coober Pedy, and ends at a casino in Alice Springs and the cliffs of Kings Canyon.
Three performers ride a bus named Priscilla to a four-week booking, and the film was shot at many of the places on the road. This route follows their trip in story order. The exact spot of the breakdown is approximate, and the Coober Pedy and Kings Canyon pins mark the town and the park.
The 1990 Western is set on the 1863 frontier and was filmed mostly in South Dakota: a Fort Hays set near Rapid City, the Badlands, the Triple U Buffalo Ranch and Spearfish Canyon. John Dunbar's journey from a frontier fort to a Sioux winter camp is rebuilt from real prairie and canyon.
The route follows the story's order and ends at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, named in the film's epilogue text. Several stops are film sets or private land, so pins mark the nearest real place.
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.
Sex and the City is set in Manhattan, and the 2008 film follows Carrie Bradshaw from her Perry Street stoop to the New York Public Library, Bemelmans Bar, Bryant Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Carrie's fictional address is on the Upper East Side, but the real brownstone is in Greenwich Village. This route follows the film's wedding, break-up and reunions through places that were actually used, from a Chelsea restaurant and a Central Park pavilion to a Brooklyn courthouse that plays City Hall.
Out of Africa was filmed around Nairobi and the Ngong Hills in Kenya, with the Danish scenes shot at Castle Rising in Norfolk, England. Sydney Pollack's 1985 film, based on Karen Blixen's memoir, uses the Muthaiga Country Club, the coffee farm that is now the Karen Blixen Museum and the Chyulu Hills standing in for the Ngong Hills.
This route follows Blixen's years in Kenya and the places the film made famous: the railway museum whose locomotive pulls the opening train, the club where Farah is turned away, the farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills, the Norfolk castle that plays Denmark, Voi Airport where Denys Finch Hatton's plane went down, and the obelisk grave on the hillside above Nairobi.
First Blood turns Hope, British Columbia into Hope, Washington: Wallace Street is the main street, the 3rd Avenue railway crossing is the motorcycle leap, and the Othello Tunnels stand in for Chapman Gorge. The 1982 film was shot almost entirely in and around the town, with its mountains and canyon doing the work of the story's backcountry.
The route follows John Rambo from the Pitt River cabin where he learns his old army buddy has died, through his arrest and escape in Hope, the manhunt above Coquihalla Canyon, and the National Guard headquarters at Golden Ears Park, ending at the gas station and gunshop of the final showdown. Some stops are exact streets and trails; several were film sets, and the Kawkawa Bridge has been demolished.
Practical Magic was filmed in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, Washington — a Victorian-era port on Penn Cove painted white for the film's island town — while the Owens house was built on a bluff on San Juan Island. The storefronts of Front Street doubled as the film's Maria's Island, and most have since returned to their original colours.
The route opens with Maria's 17th-century curse near Kanaka Bay, follows Sally's shop and the Catch and Fry along Front Street, detours to the Tujunga pool party where Gillian meets Jimmy Angelov and to the Anacortes refinery where the rescue goes wrong, then returns for Gary Hallet's lodgings, the wharf and the bluff where the Owens house stood.
8 Mile was filmed on location in Detroit: the trailer park in Warren, the New Center Stamping Plant, the Penobscot Building and the Shelter.
The route follows Jimmy Smith Jr. from his mother's trailer to the rap battles at the Shelter. It takes in the parking garage inside the old Michigan Theatre, the demolished Chin Tiki club and the empty lot where Cheddar Bob shoots himself. Some sites are gone; the Shelter and the Penobscot still stand.
GTA: San Andreas turns California and Nevada into one state: Los Santos is Los Angeles, San Fierro is San Francisco, Las Venturas is Las Vegas. The 2004 game follows CJ from Grove Street to stand-ins for the Golden Gate, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip.
This route visits seven real stand-ins behind the game, from Compton and the Hollywood Sign to Mount Diablo, the Golden Gate Bridge, Area 51, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip. Every pin marks the real place, and each stop names the in-game location it doubles for. Expect city traffic, desert heat and long drives between stops.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles runs from a Manhattan cab stand to Chicago, with Wichita and the train town played by Braidwood and South Dayton.
John Hughes's 1987 Thanksgiving comedy strands an uptight advertising executive and a shower-curtain-ring salesman in a blizzard, then sends them through a shared motel bed, a broken-down train, a burning rental car and a refrigerated truck. This route follows the journey from Park Avenue and LaGuardia to Lambert, Braidwood, Woodstock and the Loop station where Del finally tells the truth.
Little House in the Big Woods begins in a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin, and the Ingalls family goes on to a Kansas prairie, a dugout beside Plum Creek at Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and the Dakota homestead at De Smet. All five homesites survive as cabins, museums or marked sites.
The route follows the books in order: the Wisconsin woods of the early 1870s, the Kansas cabin of 1869–1870, the locust-struck dugout of 1874, the surveyors' house and homestead at De Smet, and finally Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the first four books in the Rock House at 65.
inFAMOUS 2 builds New Marais from real New Orleans: the French Quarter, Bayou St. John, Oak Alley, Fort Jackson and the Lower Ninth Ward. Cole MacGrath flees ruined Empire City to a Louisiana city ruled by the demagogue Joseph Bertrand and needs a scientist, a device and power cores to beat the Beast.
New Marais is Sucker Punch's New Orleans: a fictional city assembled from the French Quarter, above-ground cemeteries, plantation houses, a Civil War fort, the bayous and the flooded districts left by a hurricane. This route follows Cole's story through seven of those stand-ins, from the swamp where he lands to the cathedral tower where the game ends.
In 1600 an English pilot came ashore in Japan. FX's Shōgun renames the players — John Blackthorne is William Adams, Lord Toranaga is Tokugawa Ieyasu, Lady Mariko is Hosokawa Gracia — and moves the shipwreck from Usuki to the Izu village of Ajiro. This route follows the documented places behind the drama, from the real landing at Usuki and the regents' court at Osaka Castle to the mansion where Gracia died, Adams's shipyard at Itō, his house in Nihonbashi and his grave at Hirado. The 2024 series was filmed in British Columbia.
Ragnar Lothbrok goes from farmer to king in History's Vikings, a series that sprints through more than a century of Viking Age history and the sagas. This route follows the places of its events in story order, setting what the show does against what history and the sagas say. The series itself was filmed in Ireland.
From a raid on Lindisfarne to Paris under siege, a snake pit near York, a Mediterranean raid, a colony in Iceland and a court in Kiev and a voyage west, with the fictional village of Kattegat left unpinned.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is set in 9th-century Baghdad, with the Round City and the House of Wisdom, and stops at Anbar, Alamut and al-Ula. Street thief Basim Ibn Ishaq becomes a Hidden One hunting the Order of the Ancients amid the Anarchy at Samarra.
The route follows him from the ruined town of Anbar to the mountain fortress of Alamut, through the districts of Baghdad and on to the oasis of al-Ula. Little of the Round City survives and the House of Wisdom is gone, so those pins are approximate; the Iraqi stops are for reading, not visiting.
Between 1405 and 1433 the Ming court sent a fleet from Nanjing across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, seven times, under the admiral Zheng He. It came home with ambassadors and exotic animals.
This route follows the sequence from the shipyard in Nanjing through Java, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut and Hormuz to Malindi in East Africa, and ends at his empty tomb. Most ports are approximate pins, and later temple traditions are marked as such.
Jin Yong, the grand master of martial arts fiction, was born in Haining, Zhejiang. This route follows him out of the family house, to the tide he loved, and then across China to the places his heroes fight: a lake in Jiaxing, an island off Zhoushan, the mountains and monastery of Hua, Shaolin and Wudang, and a cell under Hangzhou's West Lake.
The real landmarks are documented; the sects, manors and duels set at them are fiction. Each stop says which is which, and where a pin marks the real place, it is not a scene.
In the summer of 1588 a Spanish fleet appeared off Cornwall with a plan to join Parma's army. Beacons carried the news to London, the English fleet came out of Plymouth, and within weeks fireships, a day of heavy gunnery and autumn storms had ended the plan.
The route follows the campaign through seven places, from the first sighting to a beach in County Sligo where three ships broke up. Most of the fighting was at sea, so the pins mark the nearest coast landmark, and the story of Drake and his game of bowls at Plymouth is labelled as legend.
Gil Pender is a screenwriter with a nostalgia problem, in Paris with a fiancée and her wealthy parents. Every night at midnight a 1920s car pulls up and carries him back to the 1920s, among the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway and the surrealists. By day he is stuck in 2010.
This route follows the film from Monet's garden at Giverny to Pont Alexandre III, with the stops placed from a film-locations guide: where the 1920s scenes are shot you can still sit, eat and shop today. The party and flea-market scenes are approximate.
Dune turns real places into its planets: Norway's Stadlandet is Caladan, Jordan's Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi's Liwa Oasis share Arrakis, Budapest's Origo Studios build Arrakeen and Italy's Brion tomb becomes the emperor's court. Paul Atreides leaves Caladan for the desert planet, the sole source of spice, then forces Emperor Shaddam to come to Arrakis with Irulan and his Sardaukar soldiers.
This route links the five key locations: Stadlandet standing in for Caladan, Wadi Rum and the Liwa Oasis sharing Arrakis, Origo Studios staging Arrakeen and the ornithopters, and the Brion tomb doubling as the imperial court. Part One shot from March to July 2019 in Hungary, Jordan, Norway and the Emirates; Part Two followed from July to December 2022, adding Italy and Namibia to the itinerary.
