Catalog
The Crown rarely filmed where its story is set: Lancaster House played Buckingham Palace, Ely and Winchester cathedrals played Westminster Abbey and St Paul's, Cobham Hall played Eton, and Downing Street was built at Elstree Studios. This route visits five of those stand-ins, from season one to season five, and says what each one played.
Francis Drake's circumnavigation ran from Plymouth through San Julian, Valparaíso and Callao to California and the Spice Islands of Ternate. The voyage lasted from 1577 to 26 September 1580. This route follows seven stops, from the storm-hit departure at Plymouth to treasure at Callao and a royal welcome on Ternate. Several places are approximate, and the California landing is only traditionally identified.
Bonnie and Clyde's two-year run took them from Eastham prison farm in Texas through a Joplin shootout, the Red Crown Tourist Court in Missouri and Dexfield Park in Iowa, to a roadside ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana. This route follows the real trail in order, from Clyde Barrow's prison years to the morning of 23 May 1934 and his burial in Dallas. Some spots are only approximately known, and each says so.
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.
Charlemagne's reign is traced here through Pavia, Paderborn, Roncesvalles, Rome and Aachen, the places where he won a kingdom, met a pope, lost his rearguard, became emperor and was buried. The route follows five moments from 774 to 814: the surrender of the Lombard capital, the court in Saxony, the ambush at a mountain pass, the Christmas Day coronation of 800 and the chapel of his imperial capital. The exact site of the ambush is disputed.
Watch Dogs: Legion is set in a fictionalised near-future London, and its story runs through the Palace of Westminster, New Scotland Yard, The Shard (renamed the Nexus Tower), Nine Elms and the Tower of London. The hacker group DedSec fights a surveillance state built by the private military company Albion. This route follows the story from the bomb plot at Parliament to the showdown at the Tower. The game remakes London, so pins mark real landmarks and districts, not in-game buildings.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is set in Scotland, from a heath near Forres and Glamis Castle to Dunsinane Hill. Its thane titles, coronation and a marching wood all belong to real names on the map. The real Macbeth ruled from 1040 to 1057, and the play takes liberties with him. The route follows the story from the witches' prophecy to the final duel, through Glamis, Cawdor, Scone, the Birnam Oak and Dunsinane. Several places carry the play's names without staging its scenes, and each stop says so.
XO, Kitty, the spin-off of the To All the Boys films, is set at a fictional Seoul school but filmed at real places: Incheon International Airport, Kaywon University of Art and Design, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Hwaseong Fortress's Seojangdae. The route follows Kitty's first season from landing at the airport to the end-of-term talent show, taking in a hotel exterior at State Tower Namsan, Nodeul Island on the Han River and the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan. The school itself is fictional, and its interiors were shot at other sites around Seoul.
Poldark's Cornwall is real Cornwall: the 2015 adaptation filmed Nampara, Wheal Leisure and Truro at St Agnes Head, Botallack and Charlestown, with Trenwith played by Chavenage House near Tetbury. This route follows eight locations from the 2015 adaptation, from the cliffs above St Agnes and the engine houses of Botallack to the beaches of the Lizard and the north coast. Most are open to the public, but they are working landscapes and nature reserves as much as film sets, so expect footpaths, tides and weather.
Nicosia's walled old city is a five-kilometre ring of Venetian fortifications with three surviving gates — Famagusta, Kyrenia and Paphos. Inside are the Selimiye Mosque, the Bedesten, the caravanserai of Büyük Han and Ledra Street, the shopping street that became a symbol of the island's division. The walk crosses the Green Line on foot. The route begins at Eleftheria Square, enters by Famagusta Gate and loops through the old city: the Selimiye and the Bedesten, Büyük Han, Kyrenia Gate, the Ledra Street crossing, the Ömeriye Mosque and Paphos Gate. The Selimiye, Bedesten, Büyük Han and Kyrenia Gate stand north of the Green Line; the rest are in the south.
Age of Empires II follows Joan of Arc from a French army camp at Vaucouleurs to the stake at Rouen. The designers said they deferred to history wherever it did not interfere with gameplay, and the campaign's spine — Orléans, Patay, Reims, Paris — is close to the record. But the game also bends the story, placing Joan at a battle she missed and turning a failed assault on Paris into a betrayal. This route follows the campaign's stops in order and sets each one beside what the sources say happened there.
Test Drive Unlimited sent players around Oʻahu's 1,000 miles of roads in 2006; The Crew Motorfest returned to a scaled-down island in 2023, with a car-culture festival at its centre. Both treat the island as a stage, one for a free-roam lifestyle racer and the other for a themed racing playground. This route follows a road-trip loop from Honolulu Airport through Waikiki, Diamond Head, Hanauma Bay and the North Shore to Haleʻiwa, then back south to Pearl Harbor. Pins mark the real places; the games shrink the island and invent some of the roads in between.
Thomas Cromwell rises from a Putney childhood to become Henry VIII's most trusted minister, then falls in the same Tudor politics he mastered. Hilary Mantel's trilogy follows him from Cardinal Wolsey's household through the Reformation, Anne Boleyn's rise and execution, and his own last years. This route traces the places that anchor the story: Cromwell's birthplace and London house, Wolsey's palaces at York Place and Esher, the abbey where Wolsey died, Westminster Abbey for Anne's coronation, the Seymour seat that gives the novels their title, Hampton Court, and the Tower. The 2015 television adaptation used Dover Castle for the Tower of London and Penshurst Place for Whitehall.
Netflix's Continent was built from a patchwork of real places: a Hungarian fort, a village museum, a former monastery, Canary Islands coasts and a ruined Polish castle. This route follows season one's shoot from October 2018 to May 2019: Cintra and Marnadal in Hungary, Aretuza and Ciri's desert in the Canary Islands, and Sodden Hill at Ogrodzieniec in Poland. Filming spots only; the Continent itself is invented.
In 1327 a Franciscan detective and his young novice arrive at a Benedictine abbey in northern Italy, and monks begin to die. Umberto Eco's abbey is invented, but it was assembled from real places, and Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1986 film built another one from sets and a German monastery. This route follows the borrowed pieces of the book, from the Sacra di San Michele to the portal at Moissac, then the places that played the abbey on screen. Pins for the book's models are traditional identifications, not locations named in the novel.
Dante wrote the Divine Comedy while banished from Florence. This route follows both the man and the people he put in the poem who were real: Francesca, Ugolino and Pia. It runs from the Baptistery and the sentence of 1302, through the places tied to the poem's souls and the court of Verona, to Ravenna, where he died in 1321, and the empty tomb Florence built for him.
In July 1497 four ships left Lisbon to find a sea route to India. Vasco da Gama's fleet crossed the open South Atlantic, rounded the Cape, worked its way up the African coast, and reached Calicut on 20 May 1498. The voyage ended with two ships and over half the men lost. The route follows the voyage from the Restelo shore in Lisbon to Calicut, then home via Anjediva and the Azores. Landing sites are mostly debated or only broadly known, so most pins are approximate. Dates are as the sources give them, in the Julian calendar then in use.
On 6 January 1482, a poet, a gypsy dancer, a deaf bellringer and a tormented priest cross paths in the Paris of Victor Hugo's imagination. It is a city of crowds, bonfires, gibbets and a cathedral that is almost a character in its own right. This route follows the story from the Palais de Justice to the square where punishments were held, the beggars' court, the Seine bridge, Notre-Dame itself and the hilltop gibbet. Much of medieval Paris is gone, so most pins mark an area rather than a surviving building.
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.
In April 1519 Cortés landed on the coast of Veracruz; in August 1521 the Aztec capital fell. In between came alliances, a massacre, a night of disaster on a causeway and an eight-month siege. The route follows the campaign from Villa Rica to Tlatelolco and sets the Spanish accounts of Cortés and Díaz beside Tlaxcalan and Aztec ones where they are known. Where the accounts conflict, the stop says so.
War and Peace travels from the Rostovs' house on Moscow's Povarskaya and Bald Hills, modelled on Yasnaya Polyana, through Schöngrabern and Austerlitz to Borodino, Fili and Poklonnaya Hill in 1812. Prince Andrew falls under the lofty sky at Austerlitz; Pierre, a civilian in a white hat, climbs the Raevsky redoubt. The route follows the book from a Moscow house and a country estate through Schöngrabern and Austerlitz to 1812: Borodino, the council at Fili and Napoleon waiting on Poklonnaya Hill. Some stops are real places Tolstoy wrote about, others are real stand-ins for places that exist only in the novel; each says which. Dates follow the modern calendar, with Tolstoy's Old Style date noted where it differs.
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.
1066 in three battles: Fulford and Stamford Bridge in the north, then Pevensey, Hastings and Battle in the south, with Westminster at both ends. Edward the Confessor died childless that January; by Christmas Day Harold Godwinson had fallen and William of Normandy was crowned. The route follows the crown from Westminster to the Yorkshire landing of Harald Hardrada, Fulford and Stamford Bridge, then to Pevensey, Hastings and the field at Battle, and back to Westminster on Christmas Day. The exact ground of several battles is debated, so those pins mark the best-known sites.
King Arthur's legend has no single home: he is conceived at Tintagel and holds court at Caerleon, Cadbury Castle is claimed as Camelot and Glastonbury is linked to Avalon. The route follows Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory and others from Merlin's dragons to the sword returned to the water. Every pin marks a real place that tradition has attached to an episode, not a site proven by history, and each stop says where the link is doubted.