Catalog
Dexter is set in Miami, but only part of it was filmed there: Ocean Drive in South Beach and the waters off Virginia Key are real Miami, while Long Beach, California, plays much of the rest. The route follows the Showtime series from the pilot's Miami street scenes to Long Beach's Villa Riviera and university campus, and ends at Ontario International Airport for the finale.
Fast & Furious was filmed in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Atlanta and Abu Dhabi, with Rio and the Dominican Republic as story settings. The first film used Echo Park and San Bernardino; later sequels travelled to Shibuya, Naranjito and the Etihad Towers. The route follows the saga from Dom's Los Angeles streets through Tokyo, the Dominican Republic, Rio and Puerto Rico to Atlanta and Abu Dhabi. Several stops can be visited; some cities were stand-ins for other places.
Kindergarten Cop (1990) is set in a small Oregon town and was filmed in Astoria, with the school picnic at Ecola State Park and the opening scene at a Santa Ana mall. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays LAPD detective John Kimble, who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find a drug lord's ex-wife and son. This route follows five places: the opening mall, downtown Commercial Street, the school, the picnic park and the house street. Some places are private or only approximate.
Max Payne 3 is set in São Paulo, Brazil, with scenes in Hoboken, New Jersey, a yacht attack on the Panama Canal and an ending in the state of Bahia. Max, a retired NYPD cop, leaves New York for a security job with the wealthy Branco family in São Paulo, and a kidnapping pulls him into the city's favelas. The route follows the story from Hoboken to São Paulo, the Panama Canal and Bahia. It contains spoilers. The game names cities and regions rather than streets, and its favela is invented, so the pins are approximate.
Big Little Lies is set in Monterey, California, and filmed around Monterey, Pacific Grove and Big Sur. Real places include Old Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Lovers Point and Bixby Bridge. The series follows five women drawn into a homicide investigation. This route moves from the wharf and beaches of Monterey to the cliffs and bridge of the Big Sur coast; some cafes you see on screen were sets, so those stops are marked as approximate.
Ben-Hur's Jerusalem, Nazareth and chariot arena were filmed in Italy: Cinecittà Studios in Rome for the 1959 classic, and Matera and Cinecittà World for the 2016 remake. The route follows the story from Jerusalem and Nazareth to the sea battle, the great chariot race and the Valley of the Lepers, and shows where each scene was shot. Most stops are stand-ins for the story's places, and each says so.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault follows Lieutenant Mike Powell from Arzew in Algeria and Trondheim in Norway to the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, then on to Carentan and Brest in France. This route pins the real places named in the single-player plot. The game's own levels are not mapped to exact sites, so most stops are approximate.
Tokyo Story (1953) follows an elderly couple from Onomichi to Tokyo and the hot spring town of Atami, with filming at Jōdo-ji temple, Ueno Park, Tokyo Station and Osaka Castle. The route follows the film in order: the Onomichi temple of its famous dawn scene, the Adachi suburbs, the Atami seawall, Ueno Park, Tokyo Station and Osaka Castle. Several original film spots, such as the Atami seawall, are gone.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought in February and March 1945 on a small volcanic island in Japan's Ogasawara group, from the black-sand landing beaches to the summit of Mount Suribachi. Its famous flag-raising photograph became the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. This route follows the battle from the landing on 19 February, through the Suribachi flag-raising and the fight for the northern gorge, to the memorial in Arlington and the 1985 Reunion of Honor, where veterans of both sides met on the same beach. Iwo Jima itself is not open to ordinary visitors.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is set in Tokyo, but most of it was shot in Los Angeles; Shibuya Crossing is the best-known real Tokyo spot. This route follows Sean Boswell from his Arizona school to the car meets, garages and mountain pass of the film, and shows the Los Angeles locations that stood in for Tokyo, from Hawthorne Plaza to San Gabriel Dam. Several scenes are pinned to the stand-in, not the story setting.
The Hagoromo legend, retold in the Noh play Hagoromo, is set at Miho no Matsubara, a pine-lined beach in Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka, with Miho Shrine nearby and Mount Fuji in the distance. A fisherman finds a celestial maiden's feather robe hanging on a pine and will not give it back until she dances. The route follows the tale from the beach and the legendary pine to the maiden's ascent toward Mount Fuji, the shrine that keeps her plumage, and the monument to a French dancer who loved the story.
The Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 were fought at Tsushima, Iki Island and Hakata Bay in Fukuoka, and ended off Takashima, where a typhoon struck the fleet. This route follows the two attempts in order: the 1274 landings on Tsushima and Iki, the Battle of Bun'ei at Hakata Bay and Hakozaki Shrine, then the stone wall built afterwards, the fleet anchored off Shikanoshima and the storm of 15 August 1281. Several spots are approximate, and the exact site of the Takashima episode is only the island's general area.
Sōseki's novel Kokoro is set between Kamakura, Zōshigaya Cemetery, Ueno Park, Nogi Shrine and Koishikawa in Tokyo. This route follows the student narrator and his mysterious teacher, "Sensei", through places the book names. Starting at a summer beach in Kamakura, the route visits the cemetery where Sensei brings flowers each month, the cherry trees of Ueno, the Akasaka house of General Nogi, whose death in 1912 changes everything, and Koishikawa, where Sensei's story of K unfolds. Some stops are approximate, since the novel names districts, not addresses.
Urashima Tarō, Japan's fisherman who visits the Dragon Palace, is tied to the Tango Peninsula in Kyoto Prefecture, where Urashima Shrine in Ine keeps his story, and to rival claims in Okinawa, Yokohama and the Kiso Valley. The route follows the tale from its 8th-century Tango roots through the undersea palace to the opened box, then visits the places that say he lived or ended up there. Most links are local legend, and each stop says how firm it is.
Roald Amundsen's Gjøa expedition of 1903–06 was the first to sail through the Northwest Passage, from Beechey Island and Gjoa Haven in Arctic Canada to Nome in Alaska. Today the little herring boat sits in the Fram Museum in Oslo. The route follows the voyage stop by stop: the Franklin memorial at Beechey Island, two winters at King William Island, a long ski trip to the telegraph at Eagle, the arrival in Nome, Gjøa's decades in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and her return to Norway.
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.
The Cuban Revolution runs from the Moncada Barracks in Santiago to a Mexican port, a mangrove beach near Niquero, the Sierra Maestra, an armored train in Santa Clara and the old Presidential Palace in Havana. In December 1956 eighty-two men crowded onto the yacht Granma; only about twelve survived the ambush at Alegría de Pío. Two years later the rebels were in Havana. The route follows that arc in seven stops. Three of the pins are approximate, and two places have no pin.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart's 1745 rising began on the beach of Eriskay, raised its standard at Glenfinnan, won at Prestonpans and ended on Culloden Moor, after which the prince fled through Skye and Raasay. The route follows the campaign from landing to flight in six stops across Scotland's west coast, the East Lothian coast, the area near Inverness and the islands of Skye and Raasay. Positions for the Skye crossing and for the battlefields are approximate, so check local signage before you go.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set on the Greek island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia) in the Second World War, and the 2001 film shot it around Sami, Antisamos Beach and Myrtos Beach. The route follows the film's scenes from the opening feast at a ruined monastery to the seafront built as Argostoli, the Italian camp, the mine on the beach, a partisan hideout and the mountain ambush. Much of the film was made on sets that were dismantled afterwards, so some stops are approximate.
The fictional seaside village of Gongjin in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is Pohang, South Korea: Cheongha Market, the village of Cheongjin-ri, Sabang Memorial Park and the Seokbyeong-ri lighthouse. Seoul dentist Yoon Hye-jin opens a clinic in Gongjin and falls for Chief Hong. The route follows the market, clinic, boat and lighthouse, then makes one side trip to a museum in Yangju. Two pins mark villages, not exact buildings.
Winter Sonata, the 2002 Korean drama that started the second wave of the Korean Wave, was filmed primarily on Nami Island in Chuncheon, with more scenes at Yongpyong Resort and on the Oedo garden island. Its tale of a first love lost to amnesia sends you to a lakeside city and a snowy ski slope. The route follows Joon-sang and Yoo-jin from their school days in Chuncheon through Nami Island, Jungdo and Chuam Beach, then ten years on to Yongpyong and the finale at Oedo. Two stops are unpinned: the sources name them without an exact spot.
Inspector Montalbano is set in the fictional town of Vigàta, based on Camilleri's native Porto Empedocle, but the series is largely filmed in the province of Ragusa: Scicli's town hall, the beach at Punta Secca, the ruined Fornace Penna and Ragusa Ibla. This route follows six filming locations, from Montalbano's offices and home to Donnafugata Castle and the Guerrieri Viaduct in Modica. Camilleri set his books in a fictionalised province of Agrigento, so these are screen stand-ins, not the novels' own places.
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.
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.