Coco: The Places Behind Santa Cecilia

Coco opens in Santa Cecilia, where Imelda marries a musician who leaves to chase a music career and never returns. She bans music from the family and opens a shoemaking business. Santa Cecilia is invented, but the production designer says it is based on real Mexican villages, and visitors often point to this Purépecha village in Michoacán. Mexican news outlets also reported that the character of Mamá Coco was based on María de la Salud Ramírez Caballero of Santa Fe de la Laguna. Today the village is known for colourful handmade pottery.

Location precision: Santa Cecilia is fictional and the filmmakers name no single model; the pin marks a village that visitors link to it.

Visitor guidance: The village sells handmade pottery, much of it colourful.

The Riveras, a shoemaking family led by Miguel's formidable grandmother, are the heart of the film, and she is the one who destroys his guitar. Pixar says it based them on real families it stayed with in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guanajuato between 2011 and 2013. One guide credits the city of Oaxaca with much of the colour and craft detail on screen. The pin sits in the city centre, but the research reached families across both states.

Location precision: Pixar names the states of Oaxaca and Guanajuato, not particular families or houses; the pin marks Oaxaca city.

Visitor guidance: Oaxaca's historic centre is easy to walk; the guide cited names its markets and crafts as the film's colour source.

The film grew from Day of the Dead, and its trouble starts when Miguel bumps the family ofrenda on that day and breaks the photo of Imelda and baby Coco. On Janitzio, an island in Lake Pátzcuaro, candle-lit boat processions cross to the church and graveyard for a night-long vigil. Michoacán's tourism authorities named Janitzio, with Pátzcuaro and Santa Fe de la Laguna, as part of a route inspired by the film's Day of the Dead traditions.

Location precision: Pixar does not say Janitzio was a model; the link comes from Mexico's tourism route built after the film.

Visitor guidance: The boat processions happen on the Day of the Dead; the island's church and graveyard are the focus.

On the holiday night Miguel breaks into Ernesto de la Cruz's mausoleum and takes his guitar, and the dead cross the marigold bridge to visit. San Andrés Mixquic, in Mexico City's Tláhuac borough, is a real place that stages that night: on 2 November its Alumbrada makes the cemetery around the main church glow with thousands of candles. One travel guide says its graveyard inspired scenes in Coco, though the studio has not named it.

Location precision: The studio has not named Mixquic; a travel guide links its cemetery to scenes in the film.

Visitor guidance: The Alumbrada takes place on the evening of 2 November, in the cemetery beside the church.

Unkrich described the Land of the Dead as a vertical world of towers, in contrast to the flatness of Santa Cecilia, reached over a bridge of marigold petals. Guanajuato's link to that world is loose: the city is said to have inspired the Coco team, Pixar's research trips included families in Guanajuato state, and one travel guide credits the city's tunnels, plazas and alleys. No single building is named.

Location precision: The film's Land of the Dead is invented; Guanajuato is only named as an inspiration, so the pin marks the city centre.

Visitor guidance: Guanajuato's tunnels and plazas can be explored on foot around the centre.