Angels & Demons: The Path of Illumination

This is where the Path of Illumination begins. Working from a banned book of Galileo, Langdon and Vittoria Vetra first assume the first altar is the Pantheon, and the trail they are following is said to start at the tomb of the painter Raphael, buried in the building since the Renaissance. What they reach is Hadrian's rotunda, a Catholic church since AD 609, its concrete dome still the largest unreinforced in the world. For the film, two aediculae and Raphael's tomb were rebuilt to scale at thirty feet and the rest was greenscreen; the Pantheon was used as a location on 9 and 10 June 2008.

Visitor guidance: The Pantheon is a working church on Piazza della Rotonda; Raphael's tomb is inside.

Earth is the first altar, and it is not the one Langdon expects: the answer is the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, the second chapel on the church's left nave, designed and built by Raphael and later completed by Bernini, whose Habakkuk and the Angel stand there. Langdon and Vetra arrive too late — Cardinal Ebner has suffocated with a mouth full of dirt, branded Earth. Every interior here is a set: the church was built on the same stage as Santa Maria della Vittoria, and its exterior was a police station across the piazza, hidden behind scaffolding.

Visitor guidance: The basilica stands on the north side of Piazza del Popolo, a square used for public executions until 1826; the Chigi Chapel is the second chapel on the left.

A clue on a Bernini statue in the Chigi Chapel sends Langdon to the next altar, a sculpture in St Peter's Square. He is late again: Cardinal Lamassé's lungs are punctured, and he is branded Air. The marker is a wind-rose tile on the west side of the base of the Vatican obelisk in the middle of the square — the obelisk that was shifted 260 metres in a single day on 10 September 1586, and the only ancient one in Rome that has never fallen. Permission to film inside Vatican City was refused, so the square on screen is a huge set and a good deal of digital work.

Visitor guidance: Stand at the base of the obelisk in the middle of the square: the film's marker is the West Ponente wind-rose tile in the paving on its west side.

The third stop is the altar of fire: a Discalced Carmelite church on via XX Settembre at Largo Santa Susanna, home of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, the group he carved and framed in marble, stucco and paint for a chapel commissioned by Federico Cornaro and finished in 1652. Langdon and the officers hurry here and are too late once more — Cardinal Guidera has been burned to death and branded Fire. Sequences at this church were filmed on the evening of 21 June 2008.

Visitor guidance: The church is at number 98 via XX Settembre, where the street meets Largo Santa Susanna; the Ecstasy is in the Cornaro Chapel, in the left transept.

Water is the last altar, and Langdon finds it by studying a map of Rome: the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona, the fountain Bernini designed in 1651 for Pope Innocent X, whose four river gods stand for the Nile, the Danube, the Ganges and the Río de la Plata. He arrives with two policemen and catches the assassin trying to drown Cardinal Baggia, branded Water; both policemen are shot. Filming took place at the real Piazza Navona as well, so the replica had to match it seamlessly.

Visitor guidance: The fountain stands in the open middle of Piazza Navona, and the shooting used the real square as well as the set.

The rescued cardinal tells Langdon that the four kidnapped preferiti were held here, and Langdon and Vetra storm Castel Sant'Angelo to find the assassin's lair: the four brands, and a fifth mark meant for McKenna, the Camerlengo. The assassin confronts them, leaves them both unharmed, and is killed when his escape car explodes. Hadrian built the place as a mausoleum for himself and his family; the popes used it as a fortress, and it is a museum today. Its interiors were filmed on the spot, on 23 and 24 June 2008.

Visitor guidance: The castle is a museum now; the ramparts over the Tiber are where the heroine leaps to her death in the third act of Puccini's Tosca.

The race ends here. With the see vacant, Fr. Patrick McKenna, the Camerlengo, controls the Vatican; earlier Langdon was granted access to the Vatican Secret Archive to research the altars. Near midnight the missing antimatter container is found in Saint Peter's tomb, set to detonate in five minutes. The real tomb lies directly below the basilica's high altar, the Altar of the Confession. Much of the film's Vatican is elsewhere: the Caserta Palace near Naples doubled for its interiors, and part of St Peter's Square was recreated there as well.

Visitor guidance: The basilica is open to visitors; the film's palace interiors are the Reggia di Caserta, about 15 miles north of Naples.