Dickens's London: Oliver Twist and Great Expectations

Hungry and alone, Oliver is led by the Artful Dodger along Saffron Hill the Great. He sees "a dirtier or more wretched place" than he has ever seen: a street "very narrow and muddy", the air "impregnated with filthy odours". At the bottom of the hill the Dodger pushes open the door of a house near Field Lane, and Oliver is in Fagin's den. Today Saffron Hill is a street between Farringdon Road and Hatton Garden, increasingly residential, and still nicknamed Little Italy.

Location precision: The novel places Fagin's den in Field Lane, the southern extension of Saffron Hill; the pin marks Saffron Hill itself.

Visitor guidance: Walk Saffron Hill between Farringdon Road and Hatton Garden; Field Lane is long gone, so there is no single house to find.

Nancy has promised Rose Maylie that she will be on London Bridge every Sunday night between eleven and twelve, "if I am alive". On the night itself, the church clocks chime three quarters past eleven as two figures emerge on the bridge: Nancy, scanning the foot-passengers, and a man who slinks along in the deepest shadow, stopping when she stops. He crosses with her from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore. The bridge Dickens knew is gone; the present one opened in 1973.

Location precision: The novel names London Bridge, but the bridge of Nancy's day was replaced; the pin marks the crossing today.

Visitor guidance: The bridge is a public road with pavements; the walk across it takes a few minutes.

Jacob's Island is "surrounded by a muddy ditch", known in the story as Folly Ditch. Here Bill Sikes makes his last stand, trying to escape over the rooftops by swinging on a rope. Staggering back from a vision of Nancy's eyes ("The eyes again!"), he tumbles over the parapet and falls five-and-thirty feet with the noose on his neck. Dickens was taken to the slum by the river police. Today only one Victorian warehouse survives, among loft apartments.

Location precision: The slum's boundaries are described only roughly, and the exact house of Sikes's death is not marked; the pin sits in the area.

Visitor guidance: The riverside around St Saviour's Dock is open to walk; almost nothing of the slum remains, only one Victorian warehouse.

Fagin is sentenced to the gallows. In Newgate he is searched and led to one of the condemned cells, "and left him there—alone". He sits on a stone bench opposite the door that serves for seat and bedstead. The day before his execution, Oliver and Mr Brownlow come to see him. The prison stood at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey, was built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904.

The novel opens on a raw afternoon, when Pip understands that the bleak place overgrown with nettles is the churchyard where his parents lie, and that the dark flat wilderness beyond is the marshes. Then an escaped convict threatens to kill him unless he brings food and tools. The churchyard of St James' in Cooling is said to have inspired the scene, though the novel never names it. The church dates from the 13th century.

Location precision: The novel never names the village; the churchyard at Cooling is the traditional inspiration for the opening scene.

Visitor guidance: The church is cared for by its Friends group and open daily to visitors.

Miss Havisham's house is "of old brick, and dismal", with "a great many iron bars"; inside, everything that ought to be white has long since gone yellow. Its other name, Satis, is "Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew". Dickens's biographer John Forster said the author used Restoration House in Rochester as a model, though the name Satis House belongs to another Rochester house, now the administrative office of King's School.

Location precision: Satis House is fictional; Restoration House is one traditional model, and a different Rochester house carries the name.

The lawyer Mr. Jaggers gives Pip his address on a card: Little Britain, "just out of Smithfield, and close by the coach-office". Pip arrives with his hackney coach to find men of secret appearance already lounging in Bartholomew Close, waiting for the lawyer. Little Britain is a street running from St. Martin's Le Grand in the east to West Smithfield in the west, and Dickens's Smithfield and Newgate neighbourhood is a few minutes' walk away.

Location precision: The novel gives the street, not a house number; the pin marks Little Britain.

Visitor guidance: Walk Little Britain towards West Smithfield and the nearby Bartholomew Close.

Barnard's Inn is a disappointment: Pip had supposed an hotel, but finds "the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats", round a melancholy little square like a flat burying-ground. He lodges here with Herbert Pocket, the pale young gentleman he once fought. When Joe visits, Pip is ashamed to be seen with him.