The Iwakura Mission was a Japanese embassy that sailed from Yokohama in 1871 and travelled through San Francisco, Liverpool, Sheffield and Windsor Castle on a two-year tour of the West.
From 1871 to 1873, about 50 government officials of the newly established Meiji government studied the political, military, economic and educational institutions of the United States and Europe. This route follows the British leg in detail: a textile mill near Bradford, a country house in Sheffield, Chatsworth, and an audience with Queen Victoria. The Yokohama, San Francisco and Liverpool pins mark the port or station area, not an exact landing spot.
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.
Babur, born in Andijan in 1483, fought his way from Samarkand and Kabul to Panipat and Agra and founded the Mughal line that later gave the world the Taj Mahal. The route crosses Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and India.
It follows his conquests and his gardens, and ends at the Taj Mahal, whose charbagh garden follows the pattern Babur introduced. Chauburji's identification as his first tomb is disputed.
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.
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.
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.
Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) was shot at Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang, near old Dunhuang in the desert, at Arrow Bamboo Lake and Nuorilang Falls in Jiuzhaigou, and in an autumn oak grove in Inner Mongolia.
The route follows the film from the Qin king's palace to the calligraphy school, the golden-leaf duel, the lake fight and the waterfall. Two stops are unpinned: the sources name the desert location and the oak grove only by area.
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.
Fellini's film La Dolce Vita follows the journalist Marcello from Saint Peter's Square to the Baths of Caracalla, the Trevi Fountain and the Via Veneto, ending on a beach at Passo Oscuro.
The route follows Marcello's episodes in film order, from the helicopter prologue to the dawn on the beach. Much of the film was shot in studio sets, so the route notes where a real place stood in for a set, or the reverse.
Sally Rooney's Normal People is set in County Sligo and at Trinity College Dublin, but the television series was shot in a school in Clonsilla, the pubs of Tubbercurry, Trinity itself, a villa in Lazio and a frozen coast at Luleå.
The route follows Marianne and Connell from their last school days to university and abroad. Several stops are stand-ins for places the story names, and each says so.
Danny Boyle's The Beach (2000) follows a young backpacker from Bangkok's Khao San Road to a secret island beach, shot at Maya Bay on Ko Phi Phi Le, from Alex Garland's 1996 novel.
The route runs from Khao San Road through Ko Samui, a Khao Yai waterfall and Maya Bay to Ko Pha Ngan. Several stops are stand-ins: hotel interiors were shot in Phuket, the waterfall jump in Khao Yai, and the island itself is invented.
Eat Pray Love, the 2010 film of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, was shot around Piazza Navona in Rome, at a pizzeria in Naples, in Pataudi, India, and around Ubud and Padang Padang Beach in Bali.
Julia Roberts plays Liz, who leaves a settled life for a year of travel: in the memoir, four months in Italy eating, three in India praying and the end of the year in Bali. This route follows those three legs through the places where the scenes were filmed. The memoir's ashram is unnamed, so the India stop marks only the town where the film shot it.
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.
The Hunger Games was filmed almost entirely in North Carolina: District 12 is the abandoned Henry River Mill Village, the arena is DuPont State Forest with Triple Falls, and the Capitol parade rolls through Charlotte. The sequels moved to Atlanta, where Swan House, the Goat Farm Arts Center and the Marriott Marquis stand in for Snow's mansion, the District 12 Justice Building and the Capitol tribute center.
This route follows the story from the reaping to the Hanging Tree, with eight real places and what each one plays in the films. Some sites, such as Henry River Mill Village, are private, so check the guidance before you go.
Interstellar's dust-choked farms were filmed in Alberta, at Longview, Okotoks and Fort Macleod, and its ice and water planets in Iceland, at Svínafellsjökull and the Eldhraun lava field. The secret NASA base is the lobby of Los Angeles's Westin Bonaventure Hotel.
The route follows Cooper's story in order, from the school and the baseball field through the dust storm and the hidden base to the two alien worlds. Some locations are approximate where the guides do not give an exact spot.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in 1936 Peru and Egypt, but it was shot on Kauaʻi, in Tunisia and in the U-boat pens of La Rochelle. Kairouan stood in for Cairo, the canyon outside Tozeur became the truck chase, and Hawaii played the Peruvian jungle.
This route follows the film's story order through six filming places, from Hulēʻia and the Nā Pali Coast on Kauaʻi and the Stockton campus used for Jones's school to Kairouan, the Sidi Bouhlel canyon and La Rochelle. Several spots are only approximate and some are closed to the public.
Spectre opens in Mexico City, where Bond chases an assassin through the Gran Hotel and the Zócalo, then moves to Rome, Altaussee, Tangier and the desert near Erfoud. It was filmed at many of those places, including the Ponte Sisto bridge and the Gara Medouar crater.
The route follows Bond from the Day of the Dead parade to a car chase on the Tiber, a dying Mr White in the Austrian Alps and Spectre's base in the Sahara. It ends on Westminster Bridge in London. Tangier's hotel L'Américain exists only in the story.
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.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is set in Budapest, Moscow, Dubai, Mumbai and Seattle, but its stand-ins are Prague's main station and Prague Castle, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and downtown Vancouver.
This route follows the story from the Budapest station murder to the Kremlin bombing, the Dubai tower and sandstorm, the Mumbai chase and the Seattle finale, and shows where each scene was really shot.
Quantum of Solace films its revenge chase in real places: the lakeside road at Malcesine, the rooftops and Palio crowd of Siena, the floating opera stage at Bregenz, the docks of Colón, a tower at Talamone and the Atacama Desert. Bond follows Mr White from Lake Garda to Siena, then Greene through Haiti, Austria and Bolivia, with Panama standing in for both Haiti and Bolivia and Chile for the Bolivian desert.
The route follows the film's order, from the opening car chase on Lake Garda to the snowy epilogue in Kazan. Some stops are exact filming sites, some are stand-ins: Panama's Colón and Panama City play Haiti and Bolivia, the Residencia at Paranal plays Greene's desert hotel, and Kazan is really Aldershot. The Water Gardens in London and the barracks are private or military, so they are map stops rather than visits.
Europe's Thirty Years' War runs from a window in Prague Castle to the town halls of Münster and Osnabrück. This route follows it through the battlefields of White Mountain, Magdeburg, Breitenfeld, Lützen and Nördlingen — from the defenestration of 1618 to the peace of 1648.
The stops are in the order the war happened: the castle window in Prague, the hill where Frederick V's army broke, the square where 27 rebel leaders were executed, then the sacked city of Magdeburg, Gustavus Adolphus's victories at Breitenfeld and Lützen, the Swedish collapse at Nördlingen, and the two Westphalian town halls where the treaties were finally signed. Nine places, thirty years, one continuous story.
Magnificent Century was filmed at Hadımköy's TEM studios, with a replica of Topkapı Palace; its story runs from Topkapı and the Old Palace to Süleymaniye, Hürrem's bathhouse and tomb.
Hürrem rises from harem slave to Suleiman's legal wife, a jump the series turns into a court war. The route follows her from Topkapı and the Old Palace, where the harem lived until 1541, past the mosque Suleiman built for his son, Sinan's Süleymaniye, the bathhouse she endowed near Hagia Sophia, and the tiled tomb where she lies. The palace on screen was a set; the real buildings are still in the city.
GTA: San Andreas turns California and Nevada into one state: Los Santos is Los Angeles, San Fierro is San Francisco, Las Venturas is Las Vegas. The 2004 game follows CJ from Grove Street to stand-ins for the Golden Gate, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip.
This route visits seven real stand-ins behind the game, from Compton and the Hollywood Sign to Mount Diablo, the Golden Gate Bridge, Area 51, Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Strip. Every pin marks the real place, and each stop names the in-game location it doubles for. Expect city traffic, desert heat and long drives between stops.
Fallout 3 is set in the ruins of Washington, D.C., and its Capital Wasteland includes the Washington Monument, the National Mall, the National Archives and the Jefferson Memorial as places the player can explore. Bethesda's 2008 role-playing game takes place in 2277, 200 years after a nuclear war, and sends the Lone Wanderer across the real city and its Metro.
This route follows the main story from the first view of the Washington Monument to the Brotherhood's march on the Jefferson Memorial, taking in the Mall's trenches, the White House crater and the Archives' robot guardian. Raven Rock, the real Cold War bunker in Pennsylvania, is the Enclave's base, and the Broken Steel add-on ends the route at the Citadel inside the Pentagon.
