Doctor Zhivago (1965): Lean's Russia in Spain and Finland

The film opens and closes at a dam, where General Yevgraf Zhivago tries to convince a young dam worker, Tanya Komarova, that she is his brother's lost daughter. The ending shows her with a balalaika. The dam is Aldeadávila on the Duero, 140 metres high, between Spain and Portugal. Its spillways were opened for the filming and roar at full force on screen. Most of the shots were taken from the Portuguese bank, looking across at the Spanish side.

Little Yuri stands at his mother's burial, owning only an inherited balalaika. Family friends, the Gromekos, take the orphan to Moscow. The scene was shot at La Calahorra in the province of Granada, with mountains in the background, far from any Russian steppe.

Location precision: The Spanish article names the village, not the exact field; the pin marks La Calahorra.

By 1913 Zhivago is a doctor and poet, engaged to Tonya. Since the novel was banned in the USSR, the film could not be shot there, so the whole of Moscow was built from scratch outside Madrid. The set covered about 20,000 square metres, with electrified tram tracks and two trams lent by the city's transport company. It stood on what is now Calle de Silvano, near Canillas cemetery, then open country.

Location precision: The set no longer exists; the pin marks Calle de Silvano near Canillas cemetery.

With documents from Yevgraf, the family leaves Moscow by heavily guarded train for the Gromekos' country home, Varykino, in the Urals. Some of the railway scenes were shot at Delicias station in Madrid. The locomotives on screen are Spanish RENFE engines.

Visitor guidance: The old station is now the Madrid Railway Museum.

The train halts in a forest near the armoured train of the commander Strelnikov. Yuri steps out, is taken prisoner and recognises Strelnikov as Pasha, Lara's husband. These first sequences of the film's second part were shot around San Leonardo de Yagüe in Soria. Strelnikov's armoured train was pulled by a RENFE Class 141F Mikado locomotive.

Location precision: The Spanish article names the town, not the clearing; the pin marks San Leonardo de Yagüe.

Yuri and Lara hide in the main house at Varykino. There he begins the Lara poems, which will bring him fame but government disapproval. Varykino exists only in the story; its frozen ice palace was filmed in the Soria village of Candilichera, in a house filled with frozen beeswax.

Location precision: Varykino is invented; the ice palace was a house in Candilichera, and the pin marks the village.

Forcibly enlisted by partisans, Yuri serves two years before he deserts and heads back to Yuriatin. The crew had counted on Spanish snow, but the shoot met Spain's warmest winter in 50 years. So some of the winter landscape scenes, including his escape from the partisans, were filmed in Finland near Joensuu.

Location precision: Sources say only near Joensuu; the pin marks the town.