In spring 1453 Sultan Mehmed II besieged the last Byzantine capital with a new fortress, huge cannons and ships hauled over a hill. Constantine XI held out for weeks, and the city fell on 29 May.
This route follows the siege in order: the fortress on the Bosphorus, the chain across the Golden Horn and the ships that bypassed it, the land-wall gates, and Hagia Sophia. Exact positions of some events are not recorded, so several pins are approximate.
In 1271 a seventeen-year-old Venetian set out with his father and uncle for the court of Kublai Khan and did not come home for 24 years. Years later, in a Genoese prison, he dictated what he had seen to a fellow inmate, and The Travels of Marco Polo was the result.
The route follows the book from Venice and Acre to the Persian Gulf, across the Pamir highlands and the desert to Kublai's summer and winter capitals, south to Hangzhou and the port of Zayton, and home again. Some of the roads are reconstructed by scholars, and Polo sometimes exaggerates, so each stop notes where the evidence is thin.
Battlefield 1 sends its soldiers across the Western Front, the Italian Front, Gallipoli and Arabia. This route follows the War Stories and multiplayer maps that go with them, from the Suez Canal in 1915 to Monte Grappa in October 1918.
Stops run in the order of the real battles, not the game's menu. The maps are the game's own reconstructions, so each pin marks the real ground behind a level, and one stop is a village the game invented.
Vlad III ruled Wallachia in three separate reigns and earned his nickname from impalement, his favorite method of execution. His patronymic, Dracula, is thought to have inspired the name of Bram Stoker's vampire, but the man himself spent his life between the Ottoman sultans and the king of Hungary.
Nine places follow his life in order, from the Transylvanian house named as his birthplace to the battlefield near Snagov: hostage years, exile, raids, a war with the sultan and a long imprisonment. Bran Castle is left out on purpose, since it is often, but incorrectly, said to have been his home.
In 180 AD the Roman general Maximus leads the Roman army to victory against Germanic tribes, then refuses his loyalty to the new emperor and loses everything: his wife and son are murdered, and slave traders sell him to a gladiator trainer. Proximo takes him to fight in Rome's Colosseum, where he overpowers and kills Commodus in a final duel.
The route follows the shoot between January and May 1999: the Surrey wood where the Germania battle burned, the Val d'Orcia valley of Maximus' farm, the Moroccan ksar that played Zuccabar and the one-third Colosseum replica built on Malta's Fort Ricasoli — ending at the real Colosseum, where the story's final duel is set.
The journey south ran through Morocco first. For the third season the Atlantic ramparts of Essaouira stood in for Astapor, the slaver city where Daenerys buys an army of eunuch soldiers, and the earthen ksar of Aït Benhaddou stood in for Yunkai, whose two hundred thousand slaves she promises to free. When the story turned to Dorne, Spain answered: the Alcázar of Seville became the Water Gardens of House Martell, and the bullring at Osuna the fighting pits of Meereen.
Six stops in the order the episodes aired — two in Morocco, four in Spain. The last two are the biggest set-pieces of the sixth and seventh seasons: Girona's cathedral and steps as the Sept of Baelor, and the Roman ruins at Itálica as the ruined Dragonpit.
In November 1095 Pope Urban II, answering a Byzantine emperor's plea for help against the Seljuk Turks, called western Christians to an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Tens of thousands answered — knights, foot soldiers and poor pilgrims. Their armies took separate roads to Constantinople, then marched together across Anatolia and Syria. Almost four years after the call, they stormed Jerusalem and massacred much of its population.
The route follows the main armies in order, from Clermont to Jerusalem, using the participants' own chronicles as summarised by modern historians. Violence against Jews in the Rhineland and against the people of the cities on the way is part of the story and is named plainly. There are no travel tips for Syria or the Lebanese border area.
