Catalog
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.
Crocodile Dundee follows a Northern Territory bushman from the billabongs of Kakadu to the Plaza Hotel and the subways of Manhattan. Its Walkabout Creek is really the pub at McKinlay, Queensland; its outback is Anbangbang Billabong and Gunlom Falls; its New York runs from Newark airport to Columbus Circle. The route follows reporter Sue Charlton and Mick Dundee from the outback to New York, one filming location per scene. A few places stand in for others, and the captions say where.
When Harry Met Sally... begins with a drive out of the University of Chicago and settles into Manhattan, from the Washington Square Arch and Central Park to Katz's Delicatessen, where Sally makes her famous point. The route follows the pair from graduation in 1977 to a New Year's Eve declaration at the Puck Building, with seven stops: Cobb Gate, the Washington Square Arch, the Loeb Boathouse, the Temple of Dendur, Katz's, Cafe Luxembourg and the Puck Building. Stops follow the film's scene order, not a single journey.
The Devil Wears Prada is set in New York and Paris, and was shot in both: the office tower that plays Runway's parent company, the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse, the American Museum of Natural History and the Fontaines de la Concorde, where Andy drops her phone. The route follows her from the job interview to the Paris trip and back to the newsroom where she ends up. The crew spent only two days in the real Paris, filming exteriors only.
Sex and the City is set in Manhattan, and the 2008 film follows Carrie Bradshaw from her Perry Street stoop to the New York Public Library, Bemelmans Bar, Bryant Park and the Brooklyn Bridge. Carrie's fictional address is on the Upper East Side, but the real brownstone is in Greenwich Village. This route follows the film's wedding, break-up and reunions through places that were actually used, from a Chelsea restaurant and a Central Park pavilion to a Brooklyn courthouse that plays City Hall.
Home Alone's Kevin McCallister lives at a real three-storey house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois; his family's Christmas dash was filmed at Chicago's O'Hare, and Home Alone 2 sends him to the Plaza Hotel, Central Park and the Rockefeller Center tree. The route follows both films in order, from the Winnetka house and the two churches where Kevin meets Old Man Marley to the Chicago buildings that stood in for Duncan's Toy Chest and the New York landmarks of the sequel. Every stop is a documented filming location; the house is a private home, so visitors should not disturb the residents.
Charlotte and Emily Brontë grew up in a parsonage on the edge of the Pennine moors, and the landscape of both novels still runs through the places they knew: a harsh school, a house with a famous library, a ruined farm on the heights. The route starts at the Haworth parsonage, goes to the school behind Lowood, then up to the farms said to lie behind Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and ends in Derbyshire at the hall behind Thornfield. Most identifications are traditional, not proven, and each pin says so.
In the spring of 2004 Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set out from London on motorcycles, heading east for New York with cinematographer Claudio von Planta. The ride ran from 14 April to 29 July and crossed twelve countries and 18,887 miles. The route follows the highlights: a church built of bones in the Czech Republic, a UNICEF project in Mongolia, the mud of the Zilov Gap, the Road of Bones to Magadan, Mount Rushmore and the ride into New York. Pins mark places and areas; the real line of travel ran between them.
Liberty City is New York with the labels peeled off. Grand Theft Auto IV rebuilds four of the boroughs, borrows New Jersey for the state across the river, and copies in the Statue of Liberty, the Coney Island Cyclone, the Manhattan Bridge, Times Square and the Empire State Building — then renames nearly all of them, so the game's Liberty statue holds a takeaway coffee instead of a torch. The story is set in 2008, the year the game arrived. This route pins nine real places behind those names: the triumphal arch at Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza, the wooden Cyclone at Coney Island, the Manhattan Bridge as the Algonquin Bridge, Brighton Beach as Hove Beach, the surviving 1964 World's Fair site in Queens, and three Manhattan landmarks — Middle Park, Star Junction and the Rotterdam Tower. Each stop names the in-game location it stands in for. One caveat: Rockstar deliberately avoided a precise recreation of New York, so expect the landmarks, not the street plan.
Insomniac's Spider-Man games hand you a fictionalized modern-day New York and tell you to swing it. The first game maps Manhattan, from a sorcerer's doorstep in Greenwich Village to the square where a virus breaks out; the sequel adds Brooklyn and Queens, where Peter comes home to his late aunt's house and takes his friends to the amusements. This tour follows that arc in seven stops: a fictional mansion, three skyscrapers, an outbreak square, a Queens street and a Brooklyn funfair. Every pin marks the real place behind the mission, and almost all of them can be visited on one long subway day.
Egil's saga is set in Iceland, Norway and England, and begins at Borg, the farm where Skallagrim settled near today's Borgarnes. Its hero Egill is a poet and warrior whose road runs through the ale feast on Atløy, the battle of Vínheiðr, the Gulating assembly and York. The route follows the saga from Skallagrim's settlement to Egill's old age, ending with the legend of his hidden silver near Mosfellsbær. Several places are only approximate, because the saga's sites are not firmly identified.
Long Way Down follows Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's 2007 motorbike ride from John o' Groats in Scotland through Silverstone, Tunisia and the pyramids of Giza to Cape Agulhas and Cape Town. The route picks five stops along the 12 May to 4 August 2007 journey, from the Scottish start to the southernmost tip of Africa. Pins at Tunisia and Giza are approximate.
Richard III's story runs from Middleham Castle in Yorkshire to Bosworth Field, where he died in 1485, and on to Leicester, where his grave was found under a car park in 2012. The route follows his childhood at Middleham, the battle of Tewkesbury, the princes at the Tower of London, his last charge at Bosworth, and the Greyfriars dig and cathedral tomb in Leicester. The exact Bosworth battlefield is still debated.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned real places into levels: the Brooklyn Banks in New York, Venice Beach, Philadelphia's Love Park, a Tijuana arena, Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville and Alcatraz Island. The route follows Pro Skater 2 and Pro Skater 4 from city plaza to island prison, and says what each spot is like in real life. Two pins are approximate where the game names a city but not the exact spot.
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.
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.
Braveheart's Scotland is partly the real thing and partly Ireland: Wallace's village of Lanark was built in Glen Nevis, but York is Trim Castle, Stirling Bridge was staged on the Curragh and Longshanks' court is Bective Abbey. The route follows seven filming locations in the order of the story, from the Highland glen to the Irish fields, lakes and ruins that stood in for the battles and castles. Most of the shoot moved to Ireland at short notice, so the film's map is split between two countries.
Bridget Jones's Diary is set and filmed around Borough Market in south London, with Shad Thames, the Royal Courts of Justice and Cornhill on the way. The film moves Bridget from Holland Park to a flat above the Globe pub, where the story begins. This route follows the film's story through eight London and country locations: the book launch at the ICA, the first date at Shad Thames, the mini-break at Stoke Park, the anniversary party at Syon House and the snowy finale. The film was shot over six weeks in and around London in 2000.
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.
Hitchcock's North by Northwest starts at the Plaza Hotel and the United Nations in New York, rolls through Grand Central and Chicago's LaSalle Street Station, and ends on Mount Rushmore. Its crop-duster scene, set in Indiana, was filmed near Wasco, California. An advertising man is mistaken for a spy who does not exist and has to run across the country. The route follows him stop by stop, from the Oak Room to the Chicago hotel where Hitchcock stayed, and says which scenes were real locations and which were sets or stand-ins.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) was filmed at a Scottish railway viaduct, Glasgow's streets dressed as 1969 New York, the streets of Fez playing Tangier, and Sicily around Syracuse, including the Ear of Dionysius and Castello Maniace. Six stops follow the story from a 1944 train to the Siege of Syracuse in 214 BC. Filming ran from June 2021, and Archimedes' tomb was filmed at Pinewood rather than on location.
The Handmaid's Tale was filmed in Toronto, Hamilton and Cambridge, Ontario: the Waterford house, the hanging wall at Mill Race Park and the Royal York's Jezebel's stand in for Gilead and Boston. The route follows the first season in order: the Waterford house, the Red Center, June's flashback at Ripley's Aquarium, the wall, the Main Street Bridge, the Grand Café, the Lower Bay subway, the handmaids lined up at LIUNA Station and the banquet at the Royal York.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles runs from a Manhattan cab stand to Chicago, with Wichita and the train town played by Braidwood and South Dayton. John Hughes's 1987 Thanksgiving comedy strands an uptight advertising executive and a shower-curtain-ring salesman in a blizzard, then sends them through a shared motel bed, a broken-down train, a burning rental car and a refrigerated truck. This route follows the journey from Park Avenue and LaGuardia to Lambert, Braidwood, Woodstock and the Loop station where Del finally tells the truth.
Dirty Dancing is set at a fictional Catskills resort but was filmed at Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia and around Lake Lure, North Carolina. In the summer of 1963, Baby Houseman falls for dance instructor Johnny Castle and takes his partner's place at a nearby resort. This route follows the film from the Houseman family's arrival to the final lift, through the places that stood in for Kellerman's and the Catskills resort often cited as its model: the lodge and lake at Mountain Lake, the old boys' camp and golf green at Lake Lure, and Grossinger's in New York.