Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco, but Hong Kong was the city that shaped him: a Nathan Road childhood, Wing Chun lessons with Ip Man, and the film studios that made him a star. This route follows his documented life and the places where his films and legacy meet.
It runs from a Kowloon flat and school days, through a surviving Enter the Dragon location and the hospital where he died, to the statue and museum that remember him. Where accounts differ, the stop says so.
Atlantis comes from two dialogues by Plato, Timaeus and Critias, and searchers have placed it at Santorini, the Strait of Gibraltar, Spartel Bank, Doñana in Spain and the Richat Structure in Mauritania.
This route starts with Plato's own frame in Sais, Egypt, then visits five of the proposed locations. Every pin after the first is a theory, not a find.
Amachan, the 2013 NHK morning drama, is set in Kitasanriku, a fictional town modelled on Kuji, Iwate; this route visits Kuji Station, Kosode Coast and railway stations along the Sanriku Coast.
Aki, a shy Tokyo girl, becomes a sea-urchin diver and a local idol in a small seaside town. This route follows the hometown chapter through five real places: Kuji Station, Kosode Coast, Horinai Station, Tanohata Station and Taneichi High School. Several stand in for places the drama names differently.
Departures (Okuribito), the 2008 film, was shot around Sakata, Kaminoyama and Tsuruoka in Yamagata, Japan. The story follows a cellist who becomes an encoffinment mortician in his hometown.
The route visits the Concerto café in Kaminoyama, the NK Agent office and Minato-za cinema in Sakata, the Tsuru-no-yu bathhouse in Tsuruoka and Amarume Station. Several buildings have moved or closed since filming.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is set in Tokyo, but most of it was shot in Los Angeles; Shibuya Crossing is the best-known real Tokyo spot.
This route follows Sean Boswell from his Arizona school to the car meets, garages and mountain pass of the film, and shows the Los Angeles locations that stood in for Tokyo, from Hawthorne Plaza to San Gabriel Dam. Several scenes are pinned to the stand-in, not the story setting.
Yotsuya Kaidan, the story of the ghost Oiwa, is set in Yotsuya in old Edo and first played at the Nakamura-za theatre in 1825; Banchō Sarayashiki, the tale of Okiku and the missing plate, is set in Banchō, Edo, and claimed by Himeji Castle.
This route follows both kabuki ghost stories through Tokyo and Himeji: the premiere theatre's replica, the Oiwa Inari Tamiya Shrine in Yotsuya, Oiwa's reputed grave at Myōgyō-ji in Sugamo, the Banchō district and Okiku's Well. Several identifications are traditional or disputed, and each stop says so.
Vincent van Gogh was born in Zundert in the Dutch province of North Brabant and died in Auvers-sur-Oise. In between came Nuenen, Antwerp, the Yellow House in Arles and the asylum at Saint-Rémy.
This route follows six places in his life, from the birthplace on the Markt to the attic room at the Auberge Ravoux. Some are gone or only approximate, and each stop says so.
The X-Files is set in Oregon, Alaska, Washington State and Pennsylvania, but it was filmed around Vancouver: in Queen Elizabeth Park, at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, at Delta Air Park and in Chinatown. The show remained in Vancouver for its first five seasons, and its 2008 film returned to British Columbia.
The route follows seven episodes and a film, from the pilot in 1993 to I Want to Believe in 2008, and pairs each scene with the British Columbia place that played it. Some scenes were shot in a specific building or clearing the sources do not name, so those pins are approximate.
Yellowstone is set in Montana, but the Dutton ranch house is the Chief Joseph Ranch near Darby, Montana, and much of the rest was filmed in Utah, in Park City and Ogden, before the shoot moved to Missoula.
The route follows the production from August 2017 near Darby and at Utah Film Studios, through Utah stand-ins for Montana, to the move to Missoula in 2020. The locations are listed in filming order, not story order.
Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were shot around Los Angeles, from a Hawthorne diner to Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard.
The route follows the three films in release order: the diner and boxing venue of Pulp Fiction, the Del Amo mall and strip joint of Jackie Brown, then Musso & Frank, Larry Edmunds Bookshop, the Bruin Theater and the Simi Valley ranch of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Several sites are gone or rebuilt, such as the Hawthorne Grill and the original Spahn Ranch, and the pins mark the filming locations.
GoldenEye is set in Arkhangelsk, Monte Carlo, London, St Petersburg and Cuba, but it was shot at the Contra Dam in Switzerland, the Casino de Monte-Carlo, Somerset House in London and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It was the film in which Brosnan replaced Timothy Dalton as Bond, and it borrowed real landmarks to stand in for the Soviet Union and Cuba.
The route follows the plot: the 1986 bungee jump, the casino and the stolen helicopter, MI6 headquarters, a "St Petersburg" that is partly London, the tank chase, the armoured train and the satellite dish finale. The Arecibo telescope collapsed in 2020, so that last stop is a memory.
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.
The Vampire Diaries' Mystic Falls is Covington, Georgia, where the clock tower, the Mystic Grill, Elena's house and the Lockwood Mansion are real places about 35 miles east of Atlanta.
The route follows the show around Covington's square and Floyd Street, north to the demolished Glenridge Hall that served as the Salvatore boarding house, and east to Oxford College, which played Whitmore. Most stops are public streets or a working restaurant; the grand houses are private and seen from the road or on a tour.
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.
Home Alone's Kevin McCallister lives at a real three-storey house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois; his family's Christmas dash was filmed at Chicago's O'Hare, and Home Alone 2 sends him to the Plaza Hotel, Central Park and the Rockefeller Center tree.
The route follows both films in order, from the Winnetka house and the two churches where Kevin meets Old Man Marley to the Chicago buildings that stood in for Duncan's Toy Chest and the New York landmarks of the sequel. Every stop is a documented filming location; the house is a private home, so visitors should not disturb the residents.
On 28 July 2010 Okabe Rintaro and Mayuri Shiina walk into the Radio Kaikan for a conference, and Okabe finds Kurisu Makise lying in a pool of blood. A text message sent moments later reaches his friend Daru a week early, and the PhoneWave in their Akihabara lab turns out to send mail into the past.
The route follows the real streets behind the visual novel and anime: the station exit, the Radio Kaikan hall where the story starts, the lab above a television repair shop, Mayuri's maid café, Ruka's shrine and the gyudon shop where the lab members eat. The old Radio Kaikan was demolished in 2011, so the present building is a 2014 replacement.
Wednesday Addams is sent to Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts in the fictional Vermont town of Jericho. Netflix built that world in Romania: a castle above Bușteni, Bucharest interiors, a backlot town and a country mansion standing in for the Gates house. When season 2 moved production to Ireland in 2024, Nevermore gained a castle in County Offaly, a waterfall campsite and a Dublin cemetery. Much of the Irish shoot was based at Ashford Studios in County Wicklow.
This route follows the show's geography through the real places that played it, season by season. The pins mark filming locations, not invented Vermont addresses.
A dumped teenager from Ohio crosses Europe to find his German pen pal: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Bratislava, Berlin and finally the Vatican. The joke is that nearly all of it was shot in one city, Prague, apart from a single beach scene in Rostock.
Each stop pairs the story city with the real place that played it, so you can see where the fiction and the film set part ways. Story cities are approximate; the Prague filming spots are exact.
Avatar's floating Hallelujah Mountains draw on Wulingyuan and Tianzi Mountain in Hunan, and on Huangshan, though the film was made largely on a Los Angeles stage in Playa Vista. Cameron named Huangshan, Hunan netizens insisted on Zhangjiajie, and the only walkable Pandora is at Florida's Animal Kingdom.
Expect inspiration rather than filming locations: the film was made largely on stages, so the Chinese pins are stand-ins and credited influences.
In January 1817 General José de San Martín led an army out of Mendoza and over the Andes to free Chile from Spanish rule. The crossing took 21 days, and the feat has been compared to Hannibal's and Napoleon's crossings of the Alps.
The route follows the campaign from the hill monument in Mendoza and the El Plumerillo camp, over the two passes the columns used, to the victories at Chacabuco and Maipú. The mountain stops are pinned approximately; the passes are long, and the army's exact tracks are not.
Gaidai's 1968 comedy The Diamond Arm films Istanbul in Baku's Icheri Sheher and Shirvanshahs' Palace, and its home town in Sochi and Adler. One watermelon rind, one "Damn it!", and the economist wears a smugglers' plaster cast full of jewels.
The route follows the film across its filming sites: the old streets and palace of Baku that play Istanbul, then the southern coast and a Moscow wasteland that play the heroes' home town. Only the Baku and Kiselyov Rock stops are pinned to a specific place; the rest are approximate.
The Nibelungenlied on the map: Xanten, Siegfried's home; Worms, where two queens quarrel at the cathedral door; and the Danube towns of Tulln and Pöchlarn. It tells of a dragon-slayer's hoard, a murder at a spring and a revenge thirteen years in the making.
This route follows the story from Siegfried's home in Xanten to Worms, to the Odenwald, and then east along the Danube to Tulln and Pöchlarn. Several sites are local traditions, not proof; the poem itself is vague about most places.
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.
Private First Class Ronald "Red" Daniels lands on Omaha Beach on D-Day with the 1st Infantry Division and fights his way into Germany with one squad, until a friend is captured and the search for him ends at a concentration camp. Call of Duty: WWII is a 2017 game by Sledgehammer Games, and its campaign is set among real battles.
The route follows the missions in order: Omaha Beach, Marigny, Aachen, the Hürtgen Forest, the Ardennes, the bridge at Remagen and Berga, with the real battle each one echoes. Pins mark battle areas, not a mission's exact street.
