The Nakasendō is the old "Central Mountain Route" between Edo and Kyoto, and its best-known stretch runs through the Kiso Valley, from Narai-juku to Tsumago and Magome in Nagano and Gifu.
This route follows six stops west along the Kisoji, the valley road that became part of the Nakasendō: the highest post town, a checkpoint, a town rebuilt after a flood, and two villages restored so well that you can still walk the road between them. Station numbers are counted from Edo.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes follows a real 1878 walk from Le Monastier through Pradelles and the hills of Gévaudan to Pont-de-Montvert and Saint-Jean-du-Gard, with a night at a Trappist monastery on the way.
The route follows his stubborn donkey Modestine from the first purchase to her sale, at the end of the trail that now bears his name (GR 70). One stop, near Fouzilhac, is approximate because the book gives no precise position.
Isabella Bird's 1873 ride through Colorado, told in A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, runs from Greeley and Fort Collins to Estes Park, Longs Peak and Manitou Springs. She lived out of doors and on horseback, and climbed a 14,700-foot peak with the guide Rocky Mountain Jim.
Six stops follow her letters from the Plains into the mountains and on to Colorado Springs. Most pins mark towns, because her letters rarely name exact buildings.
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1540–42 expedition went from Montezuma Pass to Hawikuh, the Grand Canyon, Bernalillo and Kansas in search of a golden city. It found no gold.
The route follows six places tied to the journey, from the border memorial to Coronado Heights. Several routes and sites are only approximate, and the captions say so.
Long Way Down follows Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's 2007 motorbike ride from John o' Groats in Scotland through Silverstone, Tunisia and the pyramids of Giza to Cape Agulhas and Cape Town.
The route picks five stops along the 12 May to 4 August 2007 journey, from the Scottish start to the southernmost tip of Africa. Pins at Tunisia and Giza are approximate.
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.
Billy the Kid's story runs through southeastern New Mexico: the street of Lincoln, where he fought in the Lincoln County War and escaped the gallows, the stone hut at Stinking Springs, the plaza at Mesilla, and Fort Sumner, where he was shot in 1881.
The route follows Billy from the ambush of Sheriff Brady in April 1878 to his death and burial in July 1881. Lincoln and Fort Sumner can still be visited; some exact spots, such as the saloon and the trial room, are not pinned.
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.
Leonardo da Vinci's life runs from Vinci, where he was born in 1452, through Milan, Florence and Rome to Amboise in France, where he died in 1519 and was buried at the château.
The route follows six places tied to his life: the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci, Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, the Belvedere Courtyard in Rome, Clos Lucé and the Château d'Amboise. Where his remains lie today is only presumed.
The Cathar story runs through Béziers, Carcassonne and Montségur: six places in southern France where the Albigensian Crusade of 1209 to 1255 left its mark.
The route starts with the fall of Béziers and Carcassonne in 1209, continues through the castles of Lastours and the well of Minerve, and ends at Montségur and Quéribus, the last strongholds. Several stops are ruins or later rebuilds, so what you see is not always the medieval Cathar castle.
In June 1791 Louis XVI and his family fled the Tuileries Palace in Paris for the fortress of Montmédy, only to be stopped at Varennes-en-Argonne after being recognised at Sainte-Menehould.
This route marks the royal coach's stops from the palace to Varennes, the citadel it never reached, and the way back through Châlons to a silent Paris. Several stops are approximate, because the sources do not name exact buildings.
Alexander Nevsky's career runs from Pereslavl-Zalessky and Novgorod to the Neva at Ust-Izhora, Pskov, frozen Lake Peipus and, at the end, Gorodets and Vladimir, where he was buried in 1263.
The route follows the prince from his birth in 1221 to his death on the way home from the Golden Horde. Several battle sites are only believed locations, and the accounts of the Neva and the Ice come mostly from Russian chronicles.
Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is set in a ruined Washington, D.C., from the White House and the Capitol to Roosevelt Island, Union Station and the Tidal Basin.
Seven months after the Green Poison outbreak, five factions carve up the capital and the Agent works to restore order. This route follows the game's key places, with a note on what each real landmark is today. The developers described the map as a one-to-one recreation of the city.
Tom Clancy's The Division is set in a quarantined New York City after a Black Friday virus outbreak, and it plays out among real Manhattan landmarks: the James A. Farley Building, Madison Square Garden and the United Nations Headquarters.
This route follows the Agent from the Brooklyn tutorial and Hudson Pier into Midtown, to the base and a rooftop firefight, and on to the final assault on the UN. The game's map is its own, so the pins mark the real places behind it.
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.
Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk is set in Prague, in the pub U Kalicha on Na Bojišti, and in Tábor, Putim, České Budějovice and Bruck an der Leitha, on Švejk's way to the front.
The route follows Švejk from his Prague local, by train and on foot through South Bohemia, to the town on the Austria–Hungary border where the regiment is stationed.
Flaubert's Madame Bovary is set in the Normandy countryside around Rouen: Yonville-l'Abbaye is traditionally held to be based on the village of Ry, and the novel's city scenes play out in Rouen, around its cathedral, its opera and its old churches.
The route follows Emma Bovary from the couple's first home at Tostes, through the market town of Yonville, to an evening at the opera and the famous cab ride through Rouen. Several places are approximate, since the novel names few of them as they are today.
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara follows three friends on a Spanish road trip, from the Costa Brava and La Tomatina in Buñol to Seville, Alájar and the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Each friend picks one adventure sport that all three must complete. The route follows the story's chapters, with notes on what was filmed where. Some pins mark a region or town rather than an exact set.
Run Lola Run is set and filmed in Berlin: a U-Bahn station, the bank at Bebelplatz, the Oberbaum Bridge and a casino in Schöneberg's town hall.
Lola has 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks and save Manni, and the film replays them three times. This route follows the story through the real places where those scenes were shot, from the platform where the money is lost to the casino table where number 20 comes up twice. The film's own geography is loose, so the stops are filming sites rather than a running route.
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 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.
Nomadland follows Fern, a widow who leaves the Nevada gypsum town of Empire in a van, past a desert gathering in Arizona and a campground in South Dakota's Badlands National Park, to the restaurant at Wall Drug and the coast at Point Arena, California.
The route takes the film's places in story order, five stops across four states. The Arizona stop is approximate: the pin marks Quartzsite, where Bob Wells's real nomad gathering is held.
Fargo (1996) is set in Fargo, Brainerd and Moose Lake but was mostly filmed around Minneapolis, from a Richfield dealership and downtown garages to a Square Lake cabin.
The route follows the botched kidnapping from the bar deal to the final arrest, pairing each story place with the site where the Coen brothers shot it; several are demolished or relocated. It ends in Fargo itself, where the wood chipper prop is on show.
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.
