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.
En 1805, la fragata HMS Surprise es machacada por un corsario francés frente a Brasil, y su capitán se niega a volver a casa. La persecución desciende hacia el sur, rodea el cabo de Hornos y llega hasta las Galápagos, con un cirujano de a bordo que solo quiere mirar pájaros.
La ruta sigue el viaje de la película y luego los lugares donde se rodó de verdad: un tanque gigante en México y el barco réplica en San Diego. Trata de la película de 2003, no de las novelas de Patrick O'Brian, y las paradas en el mar quedan sin marcador.
Grigori Pechorin, aburrido y brillante, vaga por el Cáucaso dejando estragos a su paso: la cabaña de un contrabandista en Tamán, la temporada termal en Piatigorsk y Kislovodsk, y un duelo en el saliente de un acantilado. Lérmontov escribió cinco relatos enlazados y murió él mismo en un duelo en Piatigorsk en 1841.
La ruta sigue el orden del libro, desde un paso nevado y un puerto de mar hasta el manantial, el pabellón del arpa y la puerta de roca donde Pechorin juega sus juegos, y termina en el Mashuk, donde el autor encontró su propio destino. Algunos puntos marcan lugares reales que solo hacen las veces de los de la novela.
Japan's legendary prince Yamato Takeru rides east from Ise Grand Shrine, escapes a burning plain at Yaizu, crosses Ashigara Pass and meets his end on Mount Ibuki. His sword ends up at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya.
The route follows the legend, told in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles, through five places. Several are traditional identifications, so the pins mark shrines and mountains tied to the tale, not proven battlefields.
Momotarō, Japan's peach-born ogre-slayer, is tied to Okayama through the legend of the ogre Ura, Mount Kijo's fortress, Kibitsu Shrine and Megijima, the island of caves linked to Onigashima.
The route follows the Ura legend from the hilltop fortress to the shrines of Prince Kibitsuhiko, then the island of ogres and the statue at Okayama Station. The Okayama link to the tale is modern, and some stops are traditional identifications.
The Olympian gods' birthplaces are scattered across Greece: Zeus in a cave on Crete or on Mount Lykaion, Apollo and Artemis on Delos, Apollo's oracle at Delphi, and the gods' home on Mount Olympus.
The route follows the myths from Zeus's cradle to the mountain where the gods live. Ancient authors disagreed about where Zeus was born, so those first two stops are traditional claims, not proven sites.
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.
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.
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.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 played out across a few kilometres of Petrograd, now Saint Petersburg: the Tauride Palace, Finland Station, the Smolny Institute, the cruiser Aurora and the Winter Palace. All five can still be seen today.
The route follows the year from the February Revolution to the October seizure of power, and separates what the sources record from the legend of the "storming" of the Winter Palace. Dates are Old Style, as used at the time.
Veniamin Kaverin's The Two Captains is set in Pskov (the book's "Ensk"), Moscow, Leningrad and the Arctic, following Sanya, a mute boy who grows into an Arctic pilot and sets out to prove what happened to a lost polar expedition.
The route follows the book from a flooded yard in Pskov to the orphanages of Moscow, the Leningrad blockade, the archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya and Polyarny's Square of Two Captains. Moscow, Leningrad and Severnaya Zemlya are city- or region-level pins, since the book names no exact addresses there.
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.
Natsume Sōseki's Botchan is set in Matsuyama on Shikoku: its hero lands at the harbour, rides a tiny train into town and bathes daily at Dōgo Onsen.
The route follows the young Tokyo teacher from the harbour and the toy train to the school, the bathhouse and the castle during his short, eventful stay in Matsuyama.
Goethe's Faust sends its hero from the student tavern of Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig to the witches' mountain of the Brocken in the Harz, then on to ancient Greece around Farsala, Sparta and Arcadia.
The route follows Mephistopheles' bargain across Faust I and II, from the drunken revelers of Leipzig to the Walpurgis Night on the Brocken and the classical world of Helen of Troy. Leipzig and the Brocken are real places in the play; the Greek stops are stage settings with approximate pins.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is set in Scotland, from a heath near Forres and Glamis Castle to Dunsinane Hill. Its thane titles, coronation and a marching wood all belong to real names on the map. The real Macbeth ruled from 1040 to 1057, and the play takes liberties with him.
The route follows the story from the witches' prophecy to the final duel, through Glamis, Cawdor, Scone, the Birnam Oak and Dunsinane. Several places carry the play's names without staging its scenes, and each stop says so.
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.
The Pokrovsky Gate (1982) is set in 1950s Moscow near the Boulevard Ring, and its real locations include a house on Nashchokinsky Lane, Patriarch Ponds, the Hermitage Garden and a Stalinist high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment.
Mikhail Kozakov's film, made for television by Mosfilm, follows a student, Kostik, and his neighbours in a communal flat. The six stops run from the house to the rink, the bandshell and the hospital. The flat's interior was built in a Mosfilm pavilion, so only the exteriors are real.
Kin-dza-dza! (1986) begins on New Arbat in Moscow and throws two Soviet men into a sandy desert that is really the Karakum near Balkanabat, Turkmenistan. Georgiy Daneliya's cult comedy then plays out on the planet Pluke, which was built from desert, a metro station and studio sets.
The route follows the plot through five real places: the Moscow avenue where the teleporter appears, the Karakum sands, Polyanka metro station, the Army Theatre and Mosfilm. The Pluke locations are approximate or studio stand-ins.
«Trainspotting» está ambientada en Leith, Edimburgo, pero se rodó casi por completo en Glasgow: solo la persecución inicial por Princes Street y Calton Road se filmó en la capital. Rouken Glen Park, el Jordanhill School y un pub de Queen Margaret Drive hacen las veces de Edimburgo, y la estación de Corrour aporta la escena del «aire libre» de la película.
La ruta sigue a Renton y a sus amigos desde Leith, pasando por la persecución, el parque, el bar y el colegio, hasta un andén remoto de las Tierras Altas. Donde el pub de una guía de localizaciones o el nombre de un puente son inciertos, la parada lo indica.
«Náufrago» deja varado a un técnico de FedEx en una isla del Pacífico que en realidad es Monuriki, en Fiyi, con un intento fallido de huida en balsa rodado en Namotu. Sus escenas de Memphis se inspiran en la verdadera sede de FedEx, y su encrucijada inicial y final está cerca de Canadian, Texas.
La ruta sigue a Chuck Noland desde una calle de Moscú junto a la plaza Roja y el centro de distribución de FedEx en Memphis hasta las dos islas de Fiyi, y de vuelta al Panhandle de Texas para la última escena. La isla nunca se nombra en la película, así que dos paradas son escenarios sustitutos.
«Cuando Harry encontró a Sally» empieza con un viaje en coche desde la Universidad de Chicago y se instala en Manhattan, del Arco de Washington Square y Central Park a Katz's Delicatessen, donde Sally demuestra su famoso argumento.
La ruta sigue a la pareja desde la graduación de 1977 hasta la declaración de amor de Nochevieja en el Puck Building, con siete paradas: la Cobb Gate, el Arco de Washington Square, el Loeb Boathouse, el templo de Dendur, Katz's, el Cafe Luxembourg y el Puck Building. Las paradas siguen el orden de las escenas de la película, no un único recorrido.
La misión de Bond en Japón se rodó en gran parte en exteriores: en el pabellón de sumo Kuramae Kokugikan y el Hotel New Otani de Tokio, en los muelles de Kobe, en el castillo de Himeji y en el volcán Shinmoedake, en Kagoshima. El rodaje duró de julio de 1966 a marzo de 1967, y la mayoría de los lugares son identificables.
La ruta sigue a Bond desde un torneo de sumo en Tokio hasta el pueblo pesquero de las ama y la base volcánica de Blofeld. Muchos de estos lugares aún se pueden ver, aunque el Kuramae Kokugikan fue demolido y el interior de la base de SPECTRE era un decorado de Pinewood.
«Conan el Bárbaro» se rodó por toda España: la aldea cimeria en Valsaín, la Rueda del Dolor cerca de Solosancho, las rocas de la bruja en la Ciudad Encantada, y los desiertos, dunas y salinas de Almería.
La Era Hiboria es inventada; todas las paradas de esta ruta son lugares reales. La ruta sigue la película desde la incursión en la aldea de Conan hasta la Montaña del Poder, y termina en los estudios Shepperton, en Inglaterra, donde un Conan ya mayor, convertido en rey, pronuncia las últimas palabras.
Odoru Daisōsasen (Bayside Shakedown) se ambienta en la ficticia comisaría de Wangan, en Tokio, y su hogar real es Odaiba: la sede de Fuji Television, la isla y el Rainbow Bridge que da título a la segunda película.
La comedia policial empezó en Fuji TV en 1997, el año en que la cadena se mudó a Odaiba, entonces un distrito medio vacío. Esta ruta sigue la serie desde el estudio hasta la estación Teleport de Tokio, la comisaría rodada en Shiomi y un cruce de carreteras de Kioto que hizo las veces del puente.
