Lampedusa's The Leopard is set in Palermo and the fictional Donnafugata, which is really Santa Margherita di Belice; Visconti's 1963 film borrowed Ciminna and Palazzo Gangi for the same scenes.
The route follows the Prince of Salina through the Sicily of 1860: his observatory villa near Palermo, the ruined town palace of the author's family, the country estate at Donnafugata and the great ball. The novel's places are partly invented, so each stop says how closely the pin matches the page.
Between 1405 and 1433 the Ming court sent a fleet from Nanjing across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, seven times, under the admiral Zheng He. It came home with ambassadors and exotic animals.
This route follows the sequence from the shipyard in Nanjing through Java, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut and Hormuz to Malindi in East Africa, and ends at his empty tomb. Most ports are approximate pins, and later temple traditions are marked as such.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty goes from the Time-Life Building in New York to Iceland, where Stykkishólmur doubles for Greenland, Seyðisfjörður hosts the longboard descent and Skógafoss stands in for the Himalayas. Ben Stiller's 2013 film follows a photo editor chasing a missing negative.
This route starts at Life's real Manhattan home and then follows Walter through the Icelandic towns, harbour, mountain road, volcano and waterfall that stand in for Greenland and Afghanistan. The places are real; which country they play is not.
