Assassin's Creed II: Ezio's Renaissance Italy

The game's tragedy begins in front of Florence's town hall, the fortress-like Palazzo della Signoria (today the Palazzo Vecchio), where Ezio's father Giovanni and his brothers, framed for treason by the corrupt magistrate Uberto Alberti, are executed in public. The Auditore are invented, but the scene borrows from real history: after the Pazzi plot of 1478, conspirators were hanged from the palace's own windows. The palace, with its tall stone tower, is still Florence's city hall and a museum.

Visitor guidance: The Palazzo Vecchio's museum rooms and tower are open to visitors; the piazza is free to walk.

On 26 April 1478, during Mass in Florence's cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, members of the Pazzi family and their allies attacked Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano. Giuliano was killed; Lorenzo, wounded, escaped. In the game Ezio is there to help Lorenzo get away and goes on to hunt down the conspirators. In reality more than eighty people were executed for the plot. The cathedral, crowned by Brunelleschi's dome, is one of the game's best-known climbs.

Visitor guidance: Entry to the cathedral is free; the climb up the dome needs a timed ticket booked in advance.

Fleeing Florence, Ezio, his mother and his sister take refuge with his uncle Mario at Monteriggioni, where the family villa becomes the player's headquarters, upgraded with florins over the course of the game. The villa is invented, but the town is a perfect medieval fortress: a hilltop village near Siena ringed by about 570 metres of walls and towers built between 1213 and 1219, so striking that Dante mentions it in the Inferno.

Visitor guidance: Parts of the wall walk are open to visitors; cars park outside the walls.

Ezio's pursuit of the conspirators also takes him to San Gimignano, the hill town of stone towers in the Tuscan countryside, ideal for a game about climbing. By the end of the Middle Ages its rich families had built 72 tower houses, some up to 70 metres high, to show off their wealth; only a handful still stand. Little was built here afterwards, so the town kept its medieval look into the 19th century, and its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Romagna, Ezio becomes an ally of Caterina Sforza, the formidable Countess of Forlì. She was a real ruler: an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, married as part of a deal to Girolamo Riario, Pope Sixtus IV's nephew — the pope who backed the Pazzi plot — and later regent for her son. She strengthened her fortress, the Rocca di Ravaldino, in 1496, and resisted Cesare Borgia, son of the game's final villain, until he captured her. The fortress still stands.

Venice is the game's largest city, rebuilt canal by canal with St Mark's Basilica, the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal. Here Leonardo da Vinci, an ally throughout, launches Ezio over the rooftops in his flying machine to get him into the guarded Doge's Palace, the Gothic seat of Venice's government. In 1488 Ezio seizes a powerful artefact, the Apple, from the Templars. Leonardo's flying machine never flew, but he really did design one.

Visitor guidance: The Doge's Palace is a museum; book tickets ahead in high season.

The final mission takes Ezio into the Vatican in 1499 to confront the Templar Grand Master, Rodrigo Borgia, by then Pope Alexander VI, in the Sistine Chapel — beneath which the game hides an ancient Vault. The chapel was built in 1473–1481 by Sixtus IV, the pope who backed the Pazzi plot, so the story ends where much of it began. Michelangelo's famous ceiling came later still, painted between 1508 and 1512.

Visitor guidance: The Sistine Chapel is visited through the Vatican Museums; book in advance and expect crowds.