Prince Shōtoku's temples in Japan run from Tachibana-dera and Asuka-dera in Asuka to Hōryū-ji and Chūgū-ji in Ikaruga, plus Shitennō-ji in Osaka.
The route follows the regent who promoted Buddhism, from the place said to be his birthplace to his palace site at Ikaruga and the embroidery made after his death in 622. Several dates rest on temple tradition rather than firm records, and the birthplace is marked as traditional.
Hashima, nicknamed Gunkanjima or Battleship Island, lies about 15 km off Nagasaki, and its coal mine grew from the same story as Glover Garden, the Kosuge Slip Dock and the Takashima mine.
The route follows Nagasaki's industrial rise from 1859: the Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover, Japan's first western-style dock, a pioneering coal shaft, the Mitsubishi shipyard and finally Hashima, packed with 5,259 people in 1959 and empty after 1974. It also records the wartime forced labour of Korean civilians and Chinese prisoners of war on Hashima.
The Ryukyu Kingdom ruled Okinawa from Shuri Castle in Naha, and its story can still be walked at Nakijin, Zakimi and Katsuren castles and the Tamaudun royal tombs.
The route follows the kingdom from the three-principality era and Shō Hashi's unification in 1429, through a rival lord's fall in 1458, to the royal tombs of 1501. Most of these castle sites are ruins or reconstructions.
The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38 was fought at Tomioka and Shimabara Castle and ended at Hara Castle, with roots in the martyrdoms of Nagasaki and a legacy of hidden Christians.
The route starts on Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki, follows the revolt through Amakusa, Shimabara and Hara Castle, and ends at Dejima, where seclusion pushed Christianity underground.
Pole to Pole with Michael Palin is a 1992 BBC series that follows the 30-degree east line of longitude from the North Pole to the South Pole, through Spitsbergen, Chernobyl, Istanbul, Wadi Halfa, the Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Tanganyika and Victoria Falls.
The route picks eight stops from the eight episodes, in order, ending at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Several are named only as towns or regions in the series summary, so those pins are approximate.
Leif Erikson's voyage runs from Eiríksstaðir in Iceland through Brattahlíð in Greenland to L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland.
The route follows the sagas: a boyhood on Erik the Red's farms, a crew of thirty-five, and the lands Leif named Helluland and Markland. The saga lands are only traditionally identified, so their pins are approximate regions rather than exact spots.
Palenque, Tikal, Copán and Chichén Itzá are four great Maya cities, from the jungle of Chiapas to the plains of Yucatán. Their kings built tombs, pyramids and monuments that archaeologists have read and dug out of the forest.
This route follows them in time, from Pakal's tomb in 683 to the capture of Copán's king in 738 and on to the pyramid and Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá. Pins at Tikal and Copán mark the whole site.
The Buddha's story, as Buddhist tradition tells it, runs from Lumbini in Nepal, where he was born, through Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Jetavana to Kushinagar, where he died. Each of these places can be visited today.
The route follows five stops in life order: birth, enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, the first teaching at Sarnath, the monastery at Savatthi and the parinirvana. The dates are traditional; the accounts come from Buddhist scriptures and legends.
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.
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.
In 1612 a Nizhny Novgorod merchant, Kuzma Minin, and Dmitry Pozharsky raised the volunteer army that cleared Polish forces from the Moscow Kremlin. The route follows it from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin through Yaroslavl and the Trinity Lavra to Red Square.
The five stops trace the militia's march and the monuments to its leaders. The Yaroslavl pin marks the city, as the sources name no building.
Alexander Nevsky's career runs from Pereslavl-Zalessky and Novgorod to the Neva at Ust-Izhora, Pskov, frozen Lake Peipus and, at the end, Gorodets and Vladimir, where he was buried in 1263.
The route follows the prince from his birth in 1221 to his death on the way home from the Golden Horde. Several battle sites are only believed locations, and the accounts of the Neva and the Ice come mostly from Russian chronicles.
The route from the Varangians to the Greeks ran from Staraya Ladoga by the Volkhov and Lake Ilmen, down the Dnieper past Kyiv and Khortytsia, to Berezan and the Golden Horn of Constantinople. It is the river road that linked the Baltic to the Byzantine capital.
The six stops follow Rurik, Oleg and Sviatoslav along it, through the Primary Chronicle's tales of 862, 882, 907 and 972. Several accounts are legend-tinged, and the stops are not in strict date order because they follow the river.
Jules Verne's novel sends Dr. Samuel Ferguson across Africa in a balloon filled with hydrogen, from Zanzibar past Lake Victoria, Lake Chad and Timbuktu to the Senegal River and Saint-Louis.
The route follows seven places from the book in order, from the departure port to the Nile source, the desert crossing and the falls of Gouina where the Victoria is lost. Verne's Africa is a nineteenth-century view, and the novel's pins are broad: most marks are areas, not exact spots.
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.
Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is set in Barcelona and Oviedo and shot there and in Avilés, from the rooftop of Casa Milà to the Hotel de la Reconquista and the Avilés lighthouse.
The route follows the summer of Vicky and Cristina in story order: Gaudí's chimneys, a spur-of-the-moment weekend in Asturias, Park Güell and the arched gate of Sant Pau. Each stop is a place where a scene from the film was set or shot.
Cast Away strands a FedEx troubleshooter on a Pacific island that is really Monuriki in Fiji, with a failed raft escape shot on Namotu. Its Memphis scenes draw on FedEx's real home base, and its opening and closing crossroads lie near Canadian, Texas.
The route follows Chuck Noland from a Moscow street off Red Square and the FedEx hub in Memphis to the two islands in Fiji, then back to the Texas Panhandle for the last scene. The island is never named in the film, so two stops are filming stand-ins.
Bond's Japanese mission was shot largely on location: at the Kuramae Kokugikan sumo hall and Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, at Kobe Docks, at Himeji Castle and on the volcano of Shinmoedake in Kagoshima. Filming ran from July 1966 to March 1967, and most of the locations are identifiable.
The route follows Bond from a sumo tournament in Tokyo to the Ama fishing village and the volcano base of Blofeld. Many of these sites can still be seen, though the Kuramae Kokugikan has since been demolished and the SPECTRE base interior was a Pinewood set.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was filmed in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and Malta, with Aït Benhaddou as Troy, Favignana as the goat island and the Aeolian Islands as Aeolia.
Matt Damon's Odysseus spends twenty years getting home. His crew is eaten by a Cyclops, crushed by Laestrygonians and sent to the underworld; Calypso keeps him on Ogygia, and Ithaca is full of suitors when he finally washes ashore.
This route follows the film's locations in story order, from the fall of Troy to the castle above Favignana that served as Ithaca. Every stop is a real place, but the mythical islands and monsters are not.
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.
The Driver series began in 1999 as a car-chase game and grew into a tour of real cities: Miami, Los Angeles and New York in the first game, Havana, Las Vegas and Rio de Janeiro in Driver 2, Nice and Istanbul in Driver 3, and a fictionalised San Francisco in the 2011 sequel. Tanner's undercover work runs from a Miami parking garage to a presidential car, a Rio climax beneath Christ the Redeemer and the Golden Gate Bridge.
This route follows the series city by city, from Ocean Drive's Art Deco hotels to the Las Vegas Strip and the Bosphorus. Some stops are city-level pins because the games recreate whole urban areas rather than single buildings; only Christ the Redeemer and the Golden Gate Bridge are pinned exactly.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided opens in a half-built Dubai hotel, moves to a near-future Prague, and ends at a London summit. The game's city is a fiction: Prague is compressed into three invented districts, while Dubai's hotel and London's Apex Centre do not exist. But each stop stands on a real place, and this route follows the story from Dubai to the Vltava and the Thames, using the real cities, the real model for Golem City and the real Alpine range as anchors.
The six stops follow the main mission order, from the Dubai prologue through Prague, Golem City and the Swiss Alps to the London finale.
Homer's Trojan War on the map: Mycenae, Aulis, where the fleet waited, the hill of Hisarlik, now identified with Troy, and the Scamander plain, then Pylos and Ithaca from the Odyssey. Each stop is told from Homer, with archaeology kept apart.
The route follows the epic from the fleet at Aulis to the plain of the Scamander, then the Odyssey's road home via Pylos and Ithaca. Many identifications here are traditional or disputed, and the pins show it.
A boy born in Eisleben becomes a monk, a professor and the man who defied an emperor. Along the way he vows in a thunderstorm, challenges the church over indulgences, is spirited away in disguise and ends his life where it began.
The route follows Luther through seven places in Germany: his birth house, the Erfurt monastery, the Wittenberg church doors, the Diet of Worms, the Wartburg, his Wittenberg home and the house where he died. The Worms pin is approximate, and the Castle Church doors story is tradition.
