Saint Nicholas, the early Christian bishop of Myra, was born at Patara, served at Myra (modern Demre) and now rests in Bari, with more relics in Venice. This route follows his legend from Lycia to Nicaea, Gemiler Island and Apulia.
Historians know little of the real man, so the route follows the traditional story and the journey of his bones. It ends in 1087, when sailors carried them across the sea, and in the Venice church that holds more.
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.
The Equalizer 3 is set in the fictional village of Altamonte, which is really Atrani on the Amalfi Coast, with more shooting in Maiori, Minori and Naples.
This route follows Robert McCall from the coast road where he collapses, through Atrani and the steps up to Santa Maria del Bando, to Minori and the streets of Naples. All stops are real places you can visit, though the film's village is a composite.
Russia's best-loved bogatyr was a peasant's son who could not walk until he was 33. Then he set out for Kiev, defended a city, killed a whistling monster in the forest and became the chief hero of Prince Vladimir's court.
The route follows the epic songs known as byliny, from his village near Murom to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where the relics of a real monk, Ilya Pechersky, are said by some to be the hero's. Legend and history are marked apart: the pins show where tradition puts the story, not proof that it happened.
In December 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople, carrying a few clothes, some letters of introduction, an anthology of English verse and a volume of Horace. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but gentry and aristocracy kept inviting him into their country houses. He wrote the journey up decades later in A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and The Broken Road.
The route follows him through ten places the sources let us pin, from the Hook and a Stuttgart apartment to Melk, Vienna, Prague, the bridge into Hungary, an island on the Danube that now lies under water, Plovdiv and Istanbul. Many pins are approximate: the sources name a town, not the exact spot where he stood.
