The Burke and Wills expedition of 1860–61 set out from Royal Park in Melbourne to cross Australia from south to north, by way of Menindee, the Dig Tree on Cooper Creek and the swamps near the Gulf of Carpentaria. Only one man of the four who made the dash north came back alive.
The route follows the journey in order, from the crowd-watched departure to the tree where a carved message and a buried cache were missed by hours, and ends at the Melbourne General Cemetery, where a state funeral was held in 1863. The Gulf pin is approximate: the party's last camp, not a proven shore.
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.
Florence's Renaissance is packed into a few streets: the Duomo and Brunelleschi's dome, the Medici palace, Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi and the Ponte Vecchio. Each stop here ties one building to a dated event, from a dome competition in 1418 to Michelangelo's David arriving at the Accademia in 1873.
The walk follows the buildings in date order, from the cathedral to the Accademia, and every stop can be visited. Dates mark the event at each place, not a single journey.
The Easter Rising of April 1916 was fought across central Dublin, from the General Post Office on O'Connell Street to the Royal College of Surgeons on St Stephen's Green and the canal at Mount Street Bridge.
This route follows the week from the muster at Liberty Hall and the seizure of City Hall to the surrender from Moore Street and the executions at Kilmainham Gaol. Several stops can be visited today.
The Berlin Wall ran past the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and Bernauer Straße, and much of that story can be walked today. It went up overnight on 13 August 1961 and stood until the border opened in November 1989.
This route follows the Wall from its first day to its afterlife: the gate it closed, the checkpoint where tanks faced each other, the station border hall, an escape tunnel, the memorial and the painted East Side Gallery.
The first transcontinental railroad began at the Sacramento waterfront in 1863, climbed through Dutch Flat and Donner Pass, and ended at Promontory Summit, Utah, where the Golden Spike was driven on 10 May 1869.
The route follows the Central Pacific's eastward build from California: the groundbreaking, Judah's Sierra survey, the granite labour of Chinese workers and the final ceremony. Some stops are approximate.
The Salem witch trials of 1692 began in Salem Village (now Danvers), reached the Witch House and Proctor's Ledge in Salem, and are remembered today at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead and the Salem memorial. More than 200 people were accused, thirty were found guilty and nineteen were hanged.
This route follows the story from the Parris household and the Nurse farm to the magistrate's house, the execution site and the 1992 memorial park. The Parsonage stop is approximate and has no map pin.
Wyatt Earp's story runs from the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas, to the Oriental Saloon, the lot beside Fly's and Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona, and on to the railroad tracks of Tucson.
It follows the lawman from his 1878 job as a Dodge City assistant marshal through the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on 26 October 1881 to the killings that followed in 1882. Exact buildings are uncertain for several stops, and those pins are marked approximate.
The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill in Coloma in January 1848 and spread to Sacramento, San Francisco, Placerville and the boomtown of Columbia.
The route follows the news from a sawmill tailrace to a crowd in a San Francisco square, then to two mining towns where the rush turned into streets, aqueducts and brick buildings. Most stops can still be visited, though the Placerville pin is only the main street.
Antoni Gaudí's Barcelona runs from Casa Vicens in Gràcia and Palau Güell in El Raval to Park Güell, Casa Batlló, La Pedrera and the Sagrada Família.
Follow the architect from his first major house in 1883 to the tram accident of June 1926. Most stops are open to visitors; the exact spot of the accident is approximate.
In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto near Genoa with 1,089 volunteers, landed at Marsala, won at Calatafimi, took Palermo and Milazzo, and handed southern Italy to King Victor Emanuel II at Teano.
This route follows the Expedition of the Thousand through seven places, from the rock where the Redshirts embarked to the handshake that helped make Italy. Several stops are towns rather than precise battle sites, and are marked as approximate.
Russia's national poet, Alexander Pushkin, went from the Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo to exile at Mikhailovskoye, a Moscow wedding, the duel at the Black River in Saint Petersburg and a grave at Svyatogorsky Monastery. The route follows his life, not his fiction.
It runs from the schoolboy of 1811 to the funeral of 1837, and ends at the monastery near Pskov where he was buried beside his mother. Where the exact spot of a stop is only approximate, the stop says so.
Root Letter is set in Matsue, Shimane, and its backdrops copy real places: the Shimane Art Museum, the Kyomise shopping street, Lake Shinji, Yaegaki Shrine and Matsue Castle.
A man travels to Matsue to find Fumino Aya, a pen pal who vanished 15 years earlier, and questions her old classmates one by one. The route follows five real places that the game turns into scenes, from the lakeside city to a shrine tied to the Yamata-no-Orochi legend. The game's order of visits is not documented, so the stops are a sequence, not a timetable.
Detroit: Become Human is set in a near-future Detroit, 2038, where androids work and revolt among real landmarks like the Spirit of Detroit, the Monument to Joe Louis and Belle Isle.
The route follows six places where the game meets the real city, from downtown sculptures and Eastern Market murals to the suburb of Ferndale, the Packard plant and Belle Isle. The game is an approximation, not a recreation, so several stops are marked approximate or fictional.
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.
Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia: Tara lies about five miles outside Jonesboro, and Scarlett O'Hara's Atlanta runs along Peachtree Street. The depot, Five Points and Oakland Cemetery are real Atlanta places the story names.
The route follows the novel from the eve of the Civil War through the depot and Five Points in the fall of Atlanta in 1864, and ends at the Margaret Mitchell House, where the book was written.
The Shire is partly Birmingham: Tolkien said Sarehole Mill and its pond inspired the Mill at Hobbiton, and the wooded Moseley Bog beside it fed the ancient forests of his books. Both lie in the suburbs of Birmingham, England.
The route follows Tolkien from his childhood at Sarehole and Moseley Bog, past Perrott's Folly in Edgbaston, to North Oxford, where he wrote The Hobbit, and the Eagle and Child pub, where the Inklings met. Some links are Tolkien's own words; the Folly is only a suggestion.
Philip Pullman's Jordan College is a fictional Oxford college that borrows from Exeter College, with the Gyptians moored in Jericho and the trilogy's last promise made on a bench in the Oxford Botanic Garden. Film and TV shot Jordan at Christ Church and New College.
The route follows Lyra from her home college to the canal and the garden, with the film and series stand-ins. Jordan itself is invented, so some pins mark real stand-ins.
Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is set in Oxford, at a fictional country house played on screen by Castle Howard, in Venice and at London's Savoy Chapel. It follows Charles Ryder, who is drawn into the family of his friend Sebastian.
This route visits Hertford and Christ Church in Oxford, the Yorkshire house that played Brideshead, the Venice palace used by the 1981 serial, and the Savoy Chapel. Brideshead itself is fictional, so some pins mark filming stand-ins.
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.
George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is set in Barcelona and on the Aragon front in 1937, from Alcubierre and the lines around Huesca to the May Days on La Rambla and Plaça de Catalunya. It is Orwell's account of fighting with the POUM militia, written from his own experience.
The route follows the book in order: the village where rifles are handed out, the siege lines at Huesca, the telephone exchange where the street fighting began, the rooftop on La Rambla and a quiet day in Barbastro.
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.
Tomihiko Morimi's The Tatami Galaxy and The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl are set among Kyoto University students, on Kiyamachi Street, the Kamo Delta, Pontochō and the grounds of Shimogamo Shrine.
The Tatami Galaxy replays one student's college years in parallel timelines that always end on a bridge over the river. The Night Is Short follows a black-haired heroine through a night of drinking in Pontochō and a used book fair. The stops are real Kyoto places; the boarding house exists only in the story.
Inspector Morse is set and filmed in Oxford, from the Randolph Hotel and the Ashmolean Museum to the Bodleian Library and Exeter College, where the detective's final episode was shot.
Colin Dexter's Morse novels became a 1987 to 2000 ITV series, and the prequel Endeavour returned to the same city. This route follows six places tied to the detective, from his student past to his last case.
